


come out. you're hiding.

by Fxckxxp



Category: SKAM (Italy)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet Ending, Borderline Personality Disorder, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, POV Martino Rametta, Sexual Tension, Sharing a Bed, Songfic, Unresolved Sexual Tension, albumfic? is that a thing?, brief descriptions of blood, descriptions of food, feelings of grief, graphic descriptions of Rome, kind of?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 11:48:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17487509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fxckxxp/pseuds/Fxckxxp
Summary: “Basically, it’s the story of this guy who finds himself being the last man on earth for no apparent reason. But then of course he finds out he’s not the only one. Because there’s also anotherboythere. You’ll see.”





	come out. you're hiding.

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i'm back with an au!! this fic is based on one of my very favorite albums of all time: _come out. you're hiding._ by flor. i was listening to it awhile ago and every song is just such a nicotino mood. you can listen to the playlist i made for it with the songs in order [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/12168089246/playlist/5dZiEs2jffsiVPPNo3fuI0?si=PlWg7LLCTx2vgsi6rcXyeQ) :) every part is based on a song from the album, minus one that i swapped out with one of their singles because it was just too perfect for the end. enjoy 💛 i miss these boys.

#### i. guarded

And it breaks / I never thought I'd lose my place / I never thought it'd slip away / I never thought I couldn't keep it locked and guarded in me

###### 

Marti skips a lot of school.

In pieces, though — so it doesn’t add up too fast. First period here. Last period there. A couple half days. It’s gotten particularly bad this year, but most of the time it’s with the boys. (He can blame their bad influence all he wants but a quick mental checklist reveals Marti’s the one who usually suggests it.) But the full days — the days he checks his alarm and shuts off his phone with no intention to get up — those are always spent alone.

And today is one of _those_ days.

Where Martino wakes up feeling like crap, staring at his ceiling in bed with five minutes to catch the bus; wakes up to the burden of his own fake existence; wakes up imagining he can’t go through another day the way things are. 

He rolls his eyes at himself for being so dramatic. But it’s true. He’s really good at suppressing his own identity — will make a show of it in front of the boys, point out girls he thinks are attractive. He’ll do that until it all boils into a concentrate and he wakes up feeling like he does today — with a stomach ache made from shame. Not about who he is, really, but about who he pretends to be. The lines between the two are getting muddled, though.

And lately, it’s so hard to pretend. He’ll blatantly disagree with Elia about which girl in their class is the hottest (spoiler alert: Marti doesn’t think any of them are hot). He’ll make up the most bullshit excuse when Gio does his best to play wingman. He’ll interrupt Luca in the middle of an obviously fake sexcapade, rudely telling him he doesn’t care. 

And that’s exactly what this muddled line has made him: fake and rude. 

He’d rather stew in his shame today, alone. He doesn’t have the energy to lie. At least alone, he can feel the shame in peace — without any walls. 

He isolates himself.

This isn’t the first time he’s done this. It probably won’t be the last. Sometimes he just needs a day to gather the strength to put on his mask again. It’s so tiring to wear.

So he skips school (again), turns off his phone (again), and goes back to sleep (again).

• • •

Something is wrong. Marti can feel it in that limbo of consciousness before his eyes open, the second ahead of his brain registering he’s awake. 

He jolts like he just had a bad dream, but he can’t remember any falling or drowning or dying. Pins drop through his intestines, dragging down the lining; his breath is stunted and dry and caught in his throat; forehead sticky with sweat. 

But he’s not panicked. His sinking stomach is filled with more dread than alarm once his eyelids peel back to focus. 

And he knows he’s alone before he confirms it — before he gets out of bed and checks his mother’s room, before he knocks on his neighbor’s door down the hall, before he hoists up the shutters of the balcony adjacent from the kitchen to see nothing: no people waiting at the stop for the tram, no scooters weaving through the cars stopped at red lights, no heels or boots clicking on the cobblestones. Just silence. And emptiness. 

Everyone is gone.

Yeah, dread is what’s boiling in his stomach now. A calm horror.

And besides that, two other present emotions.

1) Guilt: he feels as if he made a bad deal with a magic genie. The ones that grant wishes but don’t _really_ grant wishes. They give you what you ask for, but with a price. Words get twisted around, and suddenly you wish you never made a wish at all.

(Because technically, this is what Martino asked for. If he reads between the lines.)

2) Grief: trying to flood his veins — thud up to his heart — he doesn’t let it get too far before completely ruling out he’s in a simulation. Maybe this is some sort of test. Maybe he’s in a coma. Weirder things have happened.

Marti takes a deep breath. One hour. He will give himself one hour, and if things are still the same — if he hasn’t jolted awake or been reset or whatever it is, he’ll go out and try to find something. Or someone. What exactly or who exactly, he doesn’t know. Something inside him is jittering to move, telling him to go.

Turning on his phone, there’s no signal. Marti tries to call Gio, Elia, Luca, his mamma, even Dr. Spera — if anyone would know what’s going on, he’s either his best or worst bet. But there’s no dial tone, no automated message, nothing. His phone doesn’t even give him the time.

The digital clock on the stove flashes 00:00, and without a reference, Marti has no idea what time it actually is. He leaves it and turns the knob to smell gas. So that works. And the sink works. The coffee maker turns on when Marti plugs it in, thank god. It might be the end of the world but at least there’s caffeine. So to celebrate at least that, he makes himself a cup with trembling hands. The fleeting moment of normality lets his lungs take in a proper breath.

He takes it out to the balcony, steam rising up once it hits cool morning air the spring season hasn’t quite melted away yet. Five floors above ground and leaning on the iron bars, looking down, he sees cars in the middle of the street — left there with closed doors and no drivers. The stop lights blink from red to green, beckoning them. When he squints his eyes, he can see the tram on the tracks a block down from the stop, like it’s picked up its passengers only to stop again. Marti feels like he’s looking at a miniature setup of the world, frozen in the middle of life. Like a game half-started and forgotten by the gods. 

Again — dread, not alarm — lines his empty stomach. He thinks the eerie feeling of someone watching him could very well be comforting right now, but he doesn’t even feel that. Just a quiet sort of terror, if panic was ever allowed to be placid.

Because he’s never been one to freak out on the outside. In fact, one of Marti’s talents (if you want to call it that) is the ability to push things deep deep down and worry about them later — to put off thinking or talking about the future. About problems. He keeps it all inside, stewing. 

(God, so many things he never told Gio. His mamma. Eva. He wonders if they were to materialize right in front of him now, would he still have the courage? Would he tell them who he really is?)

Being too afraid to live his truth has sedated him — everything challenging pales in comparison to the strength (not synonymous with bravery) it takes to do this, but also a certain angle of cowardice. 

(Is that the main ingredient of dread? Of guilt?)

Maybe the secret to ending this simulation (the most comforting of all the scenarios, Martino has decided) is to scream it from the balcony: to come out to the empty world — to let free the words guarded in his heart. 

But even now, with no one around, truths bubble up in his throat still too tempting to swallow. 

He can’t wait an hour.

 

 

 

 

#### ii. restless soul

I'm sure you know / I've been looking for answers / But I'm searching in the lost and quiet places / Oh and you know / I'm never going to find truth / When I'm asking in a crowd of foreign faces/ Oh don't you tire your restless soul / You're running, you're running, oh / In place, you're going nowhere fast, you know

###### 

There’s a spot (their spot) up on Janiculum hill not too far from school — it was actually Luca who told the boys about it. The only way to get there (besides hopping the fence and crossing through a gated neighborhood) is by trespassing through someone’s garden for a few steps, jumping down a small ledge and then crawling up a different, smaller ledge, followed by a steep climb up the backside of the hill through the trees into the clearing. It’s actually quite a trek.

(How a beat-up couch got to the lookout point, none of them know.)

Sometimes Marti would come up here alone (ironically to avoid the people he’s now desperate to find), but it’s normally where he and his friends would all meet if the plan was to ditch class. They’d hang out up here, far from the view of any teacher wandering Trastevere or parent at work; they’d sit on the couch or kick Elia’s football down the hill and make Luca go get it. Up until noon when Elia’s dad left and they’d all rush over to his house to eat suppli and play FIFA. 

(Grief, again. Guilt, again. He presses it down.)

But right now, their spot is Martino’s first instinct and best bet to see how alone he actually is. 

His feet carry him up the hill unintentionally, brain on autopilot and legs burning. Nothing makes sense right now — his body and mind feel like two separate entities, but this is what he knows for sure: if any of his friends are around, they’d be up here.

Or, maybe that’s just wishful thinking, and he shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up too high. 

Because someone is there on the couch — Martino can see wild dark curls from the back that, at first glance, belong to neither Gio nor Elia, definitely not Luca. Comfort and that familiar dread fight like lions in his lungs — to the death. Martino doesn’t know which emotion makes the most sense to stop his breathing altogether.

He pauses just behind the couch.

Whoever is there is slouched with his neck resting on the back of the loose-cushion, face parallel to the sky so Marti can only see the tip of his nose behind all that hair. He holds a book high with bent arms over his face, turns the page. As if some casual reading during what Martino can only assume is his own personal apocalypse is a normal thing to do. (But fuck it, Martino made a _casual _cup of coffee less than an hour ago so who is he to judge.)__

“Hi,” Martino manages to croak out with caution, standing there with one arm crossed over his body and holding his elbow, legs shifting his weight unequally. After he says it he hopes it was loud enough.

It doesn’t seem to startle him, but the guy on the couch turns abruptly, sitting up so he can twist around and see Martino behind him. When they lock eyes, he beams — not the reflex Martino would have predicted, but his smile seems to feed the comfort still battling dread while the two feelings continue to rip away at his lungs with every inhale. 

His eyes are red-rimmed. Like he’s high. Or has been crying. Further inspection indicated the latter. 

“Oh, good,” he says, standing and rounding the couch to approach Martino. “Can you read this?”

It’s not the first thing Martino expected him to say. But he takes the book being shoved into his chest and opens to a random page:

> _“True courage is when you do not see anyone near you. Then you have to start alone. And then maybe you turn back and there is someone, in the middle of the trees, on the top of a mountain, across the river. And you understand that he is walking by your side.”_

Martino looks back up to him — “Yeah, why?” — And then he watches his face fall at the confirmation, his mouth forming a straight, pursed line.

“This is obviously a dream, right? At least I thought so. You’re not supposed to be able to read in your dreams, though...” he trails off without finishing the thought, more contemplative than disappointed.

For the first time since this morning, Marti feels the corner of his lip tug up in something resembling a smile. His body relaxes into a less tense position than before with both hands on his hips, all of his weight on one leg. “I was thinking maybe a simulation,” he offers with a shrug and a huff that almost sounds like a laugh. 

And as Marti stands here, as the comfort wins over in the presence of this stranger and he finally feels like he can breathe, he’s more convinced than ever that that’s what this is. A simulation.

(On that same note, he’s also pretty sure the key to ending — winning? — this simulation and bringing everyone back is to live his truth. Why this is the answer, he’s not quite sure yet. Maybe the fact nothing _but_ his truth has been weighing on his mind. It plays like a tape on loop, getting faster and faster with every snide comment from Elia, with every vagina joke from Luca, with every slur from Gio until he thinks it a million times a day. He’s about 99% sure it would stop if he just told them. He’s also about 99% sure it’s too late.)

Martino watches his pursed lips curl into a smile, and he nods his head back and forth like he’s pondering the plausibility of that scenario as well. “Could be —” he decides, stretching out the last word. His neck cranes with it, his eyes sparkle. He pushes his hair out of his face so Marti can see it clearly.

Ah, it becomes more apparent by the second. Only now that he’s relaxed does Marti’s gaze linger on bright eyes under long lashes. On soft skin over hard features: jaw and nose and cheekbones. On lips. As if the universe could read his mind, find his exact type, and create a living god. Of course this is a simulation.

“— I think I prefer dream, though,” he finishes.

Marti hands him the book back. “Why can’t you read in your dreams?”

“Something science-y,” he chuckles, his head tipping to the side. “No, I don’t know. Something to do with the parts of your brain while you sleep,” he gestures up to his head with the book, eyes wide with fast words. “There’s a whole list of things you can’t do in dreams. I use them as reality checks.”

Martino snorts. It’s not meant to be rude. “Reality checks?” But he kind of regrets it after he says it.

“Yeah, you know,” he pouts — more thinking than offended. “Make sure everything is still real.”

“You do that often?” Marti feels confident enough to tease him.

But the stare he gives Marti is not what Marti expected; somewhat poignant with brows drawn together and his mouth turned down in an almost resigned smile. A hint of heartache. He turns his head a fraction of a degree, and it seems so rehearsed that Marti’s heart both aches for him and beats at double time. 

But all traces of sharpness are lost when he smiles — the kind that dimples his cheeks and crinkles his eyes in the softest way. (It only makes the pounding in Marti’s chest travel up to his ears until he’s almost deaf.)

He doesn’t answer Marti, and the mood shifts in an instant. “Anyway,” he deflects, looking down and biting his lip, as if to reign in his change of expression. “Now that I know I’m most likely not dreaming, I was going to go steal the only Da Vinci in Rome and hang it in my apartment. Shall we? Eh...”

Here’s the thing about Marti. Besides skipping school, he follows the rules. Even now, with the absence of what seems to be literally every single other person on earth besides the guy standing opposite him (including the police, security guards and the Pope himself), the veins in his neck twist uncomfortably at the thought of stealing. And yet, when he looks up and they meet eyes — glittery eyes under black curls and above a mischievous smile chomped down to keep it from taking over his whole face — he can’t find it in himself to say no.

“Martino.” Marti offers his name and feels a piece of him leave with it.

His face lights up.

“Niccolò.”

 

 

 

 

#### iii. where do you go

I can see what you love, who you are / I can see how you run for the stars / All that energy that's flowing through your veins / Is it your blood to blame? / Oh will you show me what it is that makes you so extraordinarily beautiful?

###### 

“One day we’ll have to move all the cars, you know.”

They walk along the Lungotevere northwest to the Vatican, where apparently the Da Vinci is (like Marti would know). The Tiber to their right, a street of abandoned, parked cars to their left. They sit there with closed door and keys in their ignitions, motors off. Like everyone in the middle of the morning rush hour simply dissolved into thin air. The street lights keep blinking. Green to yellow. Yellow to red. Red back to green. Waiting for them to go.

(Grief, again. The thought of putting familiar faces to that mental image makes Marti’s stomach churn.)

“Why?” Marti asks simply.

Nico bumps their shoulders together. “I’m not going to _walk_ around Rome forever. We’re going to have to move them off the streets so we can drive.”

“I don’t even know how to drive,” Marti admits with a sheepish smile. 

To which Niccolò puts on a dramatic face somewhere between fake offended and exuberantly surprised. His head bounces with it, a curl falling in his face he reaches up to push back. “I’ll teach you,” he decides with a smirk, chin tipping up. “How else are we going to race motorcycles down Via Del Corso?”

Niccolò laughs when he proposes it, and Martino doesn’t know if he’s joking — but he doesn’t really care. At this point, why not. He wishes Nico would just keep talking forever; the things he says coupled with the way his voice sounds is soothing and distracting. Because now, instead of imagining everyone gone, Marti’s picturing doing a victory lap around Piazza del Popolo.

“You mean after we move all of the cars?” Marti can’t help the bubble in his voice, the whole question like an arc — high in the middle and sincere on the edges with just a hint of teasing. Like he’s both making fun of Nico’s idea while simultaneously being genuine and curious.

“Right,” Nico nods, smiling. 

He looks at Marti with thankfulness Marti didn’t expect but doesn’t seem out of place, either. 

“Unless you can think of something better to do?”

By now they’ve turned absentmindedly down Via della Conciliazione, and St. Peter’s looms before them. Up until this point, the barren streets have been well camouflaged with trees and buildings and cars — empty, but still full of stuff. Almost distracting enough to make Marti forget no one else is around, and it’s only when they walk into the empty square Marti remembers what they’re actually here for. 

And, with Nico next to him, something like adrenaline spikes his nerves. He doesn’t know if he feels like a different version of himself or a heightened version of himself.

“Actually,” Marti starts, looking over at Nico once they pass the obelisk in the middle of the piazza, stopping and gazing up to admire the colonnades that wrap around them like a hug. “There is something I’ve kind of always wanted to do. Now that I think of it. Since we’re here.” He says it offhand, with a shrug.

Niccolò lifts his eyebrows in a silent question — they disappear into the curls on his forehead.

“Let’s use the Pope’s toilet.”

Nico’s face splits into the widest smile, complete with springy shoulders as he laughs. “You want to use the Pope’s toilet?” He repeats. “Of all things?”

It’s a little drug inducing, Niccolò’s laugh. Low at first before it gets silent, the kind of laugh that can’t be anything but genuine. And his whole body bounces with it, it makes itself known in every corner of his face. Like even his nose is laughing. 

Martino lets himself take it in for a moment — study it before shrugging, his face smiley but serious. “Why not?”

Nico nods, his smile softening into round cheeks and closed lips. They turn up at the ends, making his mouth purse in a cute squiggle. He looks at Marti in a way Marti has a hard time returning — like he’s not allowed to look for too long.

“Why not,” Nico repeats again, less of a question.

They decide to do that first because one, Nico has no idea where the Da Vinci actually is and two, Marti has to take a piss. Like, really bad.

The exact building behind the church in Vatican City the Pope lives in is no secret — it’s directly north, the window he waves out of every Sunday marked with a red and white flag. And, surprisingly, almost everything is unlocked except the front entrance.

Without warning, and after several failed attempts to pick the lock, Nico hoists up a decorative stone lining the garden pathway and hurls it through the window to the right of the door, ducking and turning around as it shatters. His smirk after the last of the glass chimes on the tile inside is nothing short of victorious.

Marti looks at him with wide eyes, then helps him pick off the jagged edges still attached to the bottom of the window so they don’t cut themselves crawling in. Nico hops up effortlessly, using his upper body to steady himself before bringing a leg over the sill — when Marti tries, he falters at first.

Nico gets back up on the edge of it, a hand stretched out to help him. (Marti’s not sure if he imagines the little squeeze Nico gives his palm before unlocking their hands once he’s safely inside or not. Probably.)

“Top floor?” Nico asks, and Marti tries to picture the room they’re searching for as if he’s standing in the square looking up at it. Yep, top floor.

He nods, and they search for a staircase. The place is actually quite easy to navigate, and it only takes a few minutes of exploring to find the Pope’s room, marked with his name on the door. It’s modest, obviously: a simple bed, a simple desk, a small dresser. Two doors left ajar: one to the closet and one to, voilà, the bathroom.

Nico sits on the bench at the edge of the bed and gestures towards the toilet. “Your throne awaits,” he mocks, head dipping down with a shake. He deepens his voice like he’s some sort of announcer.

Marti does that thing with his eyes — not quite a roll, but threatening to, before pushing the door open and closing it behind him. 

The whole thing is actually quite underwhelming. The bathroom, like the rest of the place, is humble and ordinary. It looks like any other bathroom, and, without a frame of reference, he’d probably think just that. It feels like he’s pissing in some random toilet until he remembers this is the same toilet the Pope pisses in — and then laughs to himself. All in all, 6/10 experience. He flushes, does his pants up, washes his hands. (The Pope uses lavender soap.)

Nico is leaning out the window when Marti makes his way back into the room, gesturing for him to come over when he takes a step forward.

“It looks nice, right?” Nico says softly as he gazes out, eyes wandering down over the square below and then up and out over the rest of empty Rome. He scoots over a little to make room for Marti, who has a hard time peeling his eyes away from Nico to focus on the view.

He’s hard to just casually look at. There is no such thing. That realization hits Marti suddenly — the calmest he’s been yet today. Calm enough to focus micro in the moment and take in all the details. Especially now, in the pale light with a slight breeze — it tosses Nico’s curls like they’re in a goddamn shampoo commercial. Marti has to make a physical effort to not have their knees knock, their wrists touch, their noses bump in the proximity of the narrow window. There’s a phantom burn in Marti’s palm. It takes true discipline to not concentrate on Nico’s jawline, on the unique curl of the apex of his nose, on the dimple above his lip in a content smile. (But Marti has been practicing that discipline for years, so. He’s learned to enjoy the beauty of a man in quick snapshots.)

God, he can feel his own eyes get big and soft. 

“Yeah,” Marti agrees with a swallow. He says it before he looks out.

Some strange things would feel weirdly natural right now: if Nico rested his head on Marti’s shoulder; if Marti were to find Nico’s hand with his own and intertwine their fingers.

 _(Simulation. Simulation. Simulation._ The word pounds itself into Marti’s memory each time this empty world feels okay just because Nico has been here today. As if he is not allowed to feel nice things.)

“Shall we go find the Da Vinci?” Nico suggests. He turns his face towards Marti, a pursed, genuine smile under soft, kind eyes. A little wiggle of the head. He looks excited, confident. And, like he can read Marti’s mind, he (accidentally or not) shifts his weight from one leg to the other, causing his knee to bump into Marti’s. He leaves it there, kindling like his joints will turn to ash.

Marti nods. Nico could have suggested throwing themselves into a pit of lions, jumping into the Tiber, eating a scorpion — he’d agree to anything right now.

They peel themselves away from the window slowly, like it takes a lot of effort to leave not just the space, but the moment.

The only thing that Nico knows about the painting is that it’s in the museum, directly west. They wander through it without any idea where to start: accidentally up the Bramante staircase, accidentally through the Sistine Chapel.

“You know, I’ve actually never been here?” Marti’s voice echoes through one of the halls on the upper floor of the museum.

Nico, somewhere close by, shouts a distant: “really?” He’s ahead of Marti, splitting up the second floor and its rooms to speed up the search.

“Well, I mean, I _have_ —” Marti emphasizes, wandering in the direction of Nico’s voice, “but I was like, five. And I don’t remember any of it. I think mom and dad took me so I didn’t have to grow up saying I’d never been.”

“You mean —” Nico pops around the corner, his face split into a smile. “Like you just did?” He cocks his head to the side, utterly goofy. It draws a smile out of Marti, too, whether he planned on it or not. “Found it, by the way,” Nico mentions, slapping the wall before disappearing again into the next room.

Marti follows him.

“It’s, uh, bigger than I thought,” Nico mumbles, scratching the back of his neck with his head tipped down, eyes up at the frame in front of them on the wall. 

It’s definitely going to be a two person job to carry — if they can even get it down.

Looking up at it, Marti has a few thoughts: the first one is that this… painting (if one could even call it that) is very ugly. It’s also not finished. The man in it looks pained, the colors are worn and muted, and he doesn’t care if Da Vinci painted it with his butt, Marti would never hang it in his house. The second one is that the monstrous, ornate gold frame it’s in looks like it weighs a million pounds. He’s not sure where Nico’s apartment is, and now he’s curious if Nico has thought far enough ahead that they will have to carry it there. On foot.

“Are you sure you still want it?” Marti asks, a purposeful hint of doubt in his voice that he may or may not want to sway Nico’s decision with.

“Let’s try to get it off the wall,” Nico decides.

That in itself is a feat. There are hooks, screws they undo with keys, metal wires stapled to the plaster they pick off with their fingernails. Marti is surprised they are determined enough to get it down — Nico doesn’t even insist they keep going, they just do, and once enough of the mounting has fallen away that the painting is still attached to the wall but can no longer support itself, Nico holds the base of it while Marti undoes the last few screws on the backing with the hard plastic edge of a bank card from his wallet.

When it’s finally free, the top edge in Marti’s grasp while Nico holds the base, there’s a moment where they just look at each other. 

First, in a sort of awe, because, well, they did it. 

Second, with borderline giddy smiles — because. Well. They did it.

 

 

 

 

#### iv. ocean

All around me / Last thing I need is your warm face going cold / Please stay around me / Long as you keep that comfort close

###### 

Nico doesn’t live far, thankfully, but they still sprint (as well as they can, both hauling the painting with Nico running backward) back to his apartment — smiles plastered on their faces — as if someone were actually chasing them; as if they really did just steal priceless artwork from the most powerful church in Europe.

And they don’t stop until they’re up the first flight of stairs, leaning against the wall in the landing to catch their breath (which is really difficult for Marti to do when he’s laughing, by the way). They set it against the wall before going inside. 

“I can’t believe…” Marti pants, one hand on his hip and the other gesturing vaguely to the frame between them. No strength and no energy and no oxygen. “Of all the things we passed to find this, _this_ is still what you wanted.” He looks over at Nico, whose head is leaned all the way back against the wall, neck exposed and knees buckling like he’s about to slide down it. “It’s not even finished.”

“But it’s _Da Vinci,”_ Nico emphasizes, smiling and breathing hard with his eyes closed, like this is the best moment of his life. 

(It takes one second for Marti to put his head in the gutter and one more to drag himself right back out.) 

Nico turns and pushes open the front door he apparently didn’t bother to lock. He keeps it propped open with his foot, and they hoist up the painting and drag it inside.

Marti follows Nico through the front of the apartment as he scopes various walls, contemplating with a slight tilt to his head every now and then like he can’t decide where it should go. Ultimately, Nico settles for right on top of the upright piano in the next room, the frame just leaned up against the wall where it almost touches the ceiling.

Not that there’s a lot of room for it anywhere else. The entire place is dripping with art, plants, furniture, books… it’s a home. A lived in home. In fact, the piece fits so well with the other decor that if Marti had no idea what it was, he wouldn’t even look at it twice.

“Where is your place?” Nico turns around, hands on his hips with a curious smile — eyebrows raised and top lip lopsided over his teeth. He’s still catching his breath.

Marti is too. “Ostiense.”

“That’s too far,” Nico decides like it’s nothing. Like there is no other choice. He waves his hand and starts walking down the hallway. “Help me change the sheets. You can stay in my parent's room. Or I can stay in my parent's room and you can stay in my room?”

Marti snorts, trailing behind Nico around the corner. “I won’t kick you out of your own room.”

It surprises Marti how easily he agrees — how, actually, the thought of backing out doesn’t even cross his mind. Normally Marti would tense up a bit, make an excuse or be overly thankful to the point it causes the other person to reconsider their offer. Sure, Nico is a little peculiar, but in a way Marti is comfortably captivated by. Right now, he feels like both an intruder and a welcome guest during this strange exchange of mutual ease and agreement of their living situation, like under normal circumstances he’d never be allowed. Now, though — it feels strangely like his home, too.

Marti leans in the doorway to the room after he follows Nico (who rummages around in the closet just outside in the hallway, producing a pile of new sheets, blankets, and pillows that obstruct his face from view). He peeks in: it definitely looks like an established, married couple’s bedroom — so lived in. Plain white sheets and a white duvet are unmade atop the mattress on an old oak frame, a matching bench at the end where unfolded pants and a bra drape over it. A decorative chair in the corner has a weekend bag with clothes still inside it. A book sits face down halfway at the spine on the nightstand, and an almost empty glass of water stands beside it. Loose earrings scatter the top of the dresser.

As if the room is beckoning for its owners to come back and live in it again.

Marti helps Nico strip the bed, and everything feels a decibel quieter and degree colder. Not outside. But inside.

Marti imagines going back to his own house after this day. How it might feel even quieter. Even colder.

Nico’s face has certainly fallen as he negligently folds the old sheets. Marti’s so attuned to all of the minute changes in his body language it almost feels like he shouldn’t be looking — his expression sinks by the second, his arms become limp and tired. Something in the atmosphere has flipped a switch, and Marti has a hunch as to what.

Who knows if Nico saw his parents yesterday, if he heard their voices before he woke up this morning. If it went the same way for him as it did for Marti, and, if, unlike Marti, he woke up panicked. Who knows why he left the house. For Marti, it was the strange pull to search. To confirm his surroundings. For Nico? It’s hard to tell. He’s brave for coming back here. Marti tries to tell him that the best he can:

“We could go anywhere, you know,” Marti suggests. “On the top floor of an apartment overlooking Piazza Navona…” he drags out, trying to make his voice sound light and high and cheery. He and Nico tuck the loose sheet over the mattress and stuff the pillows into new cases. “Or Piazza della Rotonda… Piazza di Spagna...”

Nico smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. With a sigh, he lays down perpendicular on the freshly made bed and pats the spot next to him. Marti mirrors it, their heads and feet in opposite directions. Maybe it’s better this way, to not look at each other right now. Marti feels his whole body compact in contradiction as he tries to decompress. He’s tired and hungry and alone yet not — sad yet not. Comfortable yet not. Not everything about today has fully hit him, but the parts that do are jabs so sharp he feels bruised from just the thought of them.

“Maybe once we’ve moved all the cars,” Nico whispers, and Marti can’t see his face, but it’s said with something resembling a laugh. “I’m not going to carry that painting across town again. We’ll drive it there.”

It’s a joke. But there’s seriousness to it as well. Not today — if this is really real, then maybe tomorrow. Or a week from now. They’ll slowly part with the surroundings that remind them of how everything important that filled them are now gone. They’ll find new surroundings.

Marti closes his eyes, feeling his body sink heavy into the duvet; he smiles, chuckles just so Nico will hear it. “We could just move into Villa Borghese. Then we wouldn’t have to haul all of your weird art all over the city.” Again, a joke. But it doesn’t have to be.

Nico clears his throat. “I don’t hate that idea.” He knees Marti playfully in the side and then keeps it there, pressed against his ribs.

Marti’s palm still buzzes from Nico’s touch at the Vatican. He feels that same burn on his ribs now, too. He wonders if these hot spots will stay with him forever.

It’s so silent. Usually, there’s music from pubs on the street below, scooters whizzing, people chatting through an open window. All Marti can hear is his own deep breaths as he stares at the ceiling and tries not to fall asleep. He can hear Nico’s too, almost shaky. Unsteady inhale. Rocky exhale. On the verge of what sounds like tears. Hearing it makes Marti close his eyes to combat them from watering himself. He swallows a lump in his throat that’s sticky going down.

“Are you okay?” Marti manages to ask, surprised at how steady it comes out.

It’s a stupid question. Nothing is okay — everyone is gone. But his stupid question must be so stupid that it makes Nico chuckle. And then sniffle.

He obviously doesn’t judge Marti for it. If anything, perhaps he sounds grateful. “I just thought maybe I would have woken up by now,” Nico whispers, voice fragile and slow and deep. “So now I’m just afraid to go back to sleep.”

It’s so different than the inflection Marti’s been used to hearing all day — bright and certain with the source of a smile — but not surprising. Marti has no precedent or expectation for how anyone should react in this situation. 

All he knows is how he feels: filled with a dread that’s now been won over by an almost somber comfort. 

And besides that, he’s done what he’s always done: pushed the grief deep deep down.

“Because if I go to sleep,” Nico continues, unprompted, voice going lower, “maybe I’ll wake up and everything will be normal. But what if I go to sleep and fall deeper in, like a dream within a dream?”

Marti doesn’t know what to say, he’s so bad at this. He wants to reach out — to touch Nico’s hand laying on the mattress between them, to rest his head on top of his ankle — anything without words. But he doesn’t feel allowed.

Nico’s voice gets even softer. “Or, maybe. This is real.”

Deep down, Marti still doesn’t want to believe that. “You could always convert to my simulation theory,” he offers sincerely, turning his head to the side and staring at Nico’s shin. There’s a smile in his voice he hopes Nico can hear.

He’s still rather convinced that’s what this is.

“Can you remember everything that’s happened to you up until this point?” Nico asks. “Or do your memories start from this morning?”

(Eva topless at the beach, watching Gio watch her. His dad announcing he’s leaving and actually leaving on the same day. His mom sleeping for what feels like weeks. Luca in Greece. Too many beers with Peccio and Elia. Downloading Grindr. Just to see.)

He has memories. Even the not so nice ones have a rose-colored tint to them. 

“I remember stuff from before today,” Marti answers.

Nico sighs, but not annoyed. It’s almost like Marti can hear him close his eyes. In defeat. “Then it’s not a simulation.”

Dreams. Simulations. Tests on what is and isn’t real. Marti’s tempted to ask Nico why he knows all of these things or why he’s thought so much about them.

But he deflects. Again. “Sounds like something someone in a simulation would say,” Marti teases, the tone still soft and kind.

A little laugh from the end of the bed. A small victory. Nico presses his knee closer into Marti, his shin flattening along his upper arm and shoulder. It’s not unlike how Gio might have laid beside him the countless nights he’s slept over — just a comforting closeness. That’s all. But it still spreads a shiver through Marti’s skin at every point of contact. He wonders if soon his whole body will be like a landmine of hot and cold patches where Nico has and hasn’t touched him.

“I used to wonder that all the time. Before any of this happened,” Nico continues, the laugh fading. “If I was in a simulation, I mean. But that freaks me out.”

“Why?” Marti asks, honest.

Nico takes a long time to answer him, and when he does, Marti wishes he could erase the hopelessness from it.

“Because today? Sure. I’m alone. But yesterday? It would mean everyone else was never real. So still alone. Only worse.”

Marti fights the urge to reach out and touch him. Fights the dread trying to inch back in on his peripherals. Fights literally every emotion and thought that isn't comforting from trying to crawl up his throat.

So he focuses on the physical things: soft new sheets, Nico’s leg pressed against him. On the intangible things, too — how everything else seems to disappear when Nico speaks (or maybe how he distracts Marti from the fact everything has already disappeared).

Nico’s voice is laced with it: comfort. Maybe not for him, but for Marti. “Can I stay in here?”

“Yes,” Marti agrees like it’s nothing. Like there is no other choice.

 

 

 

 

#### v. hold on

You can count on it, I'm where you left me / I can count on you to show me the way / We can keep it light, we're going somewhere / I won't try to fight it, don't feel like it / In your skin, in your hair / I'm tangled up / In my head, in my mind / I can't get out

###### 

Marti wakes up with his face pressed into the underside of Nico’s knee and his thigh flush against his back. And at first, unlike the moment between dreaming and opening his eyes yesterday, everything seems serene before his stomach starts to sink instead of the other way around.

Yesterday was real.

He pretends to sleep for just another minute and let the legitimacy of it all soak through in small bursts (that’s the only way he can absorb it without shock, really). Focusing on his physical surroundings helps a little, because it means if yesterday was real, Nico is too. So he lets all his senses be hyper-cognizant: he feels the hairs on the back of Nico’s calf brushing against his forehead. His spine moving up and down with deep breaths against his femur. Soft sheets under them and pillows everywhere but below their heads.

But Marti can only concentrate for so long until the quiet outside becomes loud — the absence of cars and scooters shifting gears on the way to work, the lack of loud voices, no footsteps in the apartment above or the hissing of a shower from across the hall. At this point, those sounds might frighten him more than anything.

His stomach growling breaks that silence.

“Hungry?”

Nico rolls over, and Marti feels his face go red — like he’s been caught savoring their half-cuddle. 

All it takes is one word from Nico (and it could be literally any word) for Marti to zero in on the moment — on him. His wobbly insides and loud brain trying to focus immediately calm. 

For the first time since laying down, they look at each other from opposite sides of the bed. 

Nico has that pursed, genuine smile that breaks open his lips so slightly Marti can see just a sliver of gums. Tired eyes, too, and hair sticking up in every direction. The word _cute_ pops into Marti’s brain, and he wishes it didn’t.

Despite the conversation last night, Nico must be feeling better. Or maybe some sleep just recharged him enough to put up a façade. He’s a little hard for Marti to read.

Marti nods his head sheepishly. Come to think of it, they didn’t eat anything yesterday.

“We can take anything we want from the grocery store,” Nico realizes, chin tipping in with a little wobble, excited. “We never keep chocolate in the house, so. Chocolate for breakfast. C’mon.”

Marti watches Nico spring effortlessly off the bed and out the french doors — wondering how, considering he himself has a stiff neck and all of his limbs are tingly with sleep, the blood returning to them when he stands. 

He moves to follow Nico and find the bathroom, turning the corner into the hall and realizing he doesn’t know how to move about this house, doesn’t know where all of the familiar things are. And, come to think of it, all of his own clothes, shoes, personal stuff — it’s all back home.

God, none of this has been thought through. Marti wonders if being here or if being in his own home would be more overwhelming right now — if being alone but domestic weighs out the feeling of not knowing whether Nico has an extra toothbrush for him or not makes him want to cry.

Nico’s head appears around the doorframe to his own room with his tongue caught between his teeth in a smile, and Marti is being thrown a clean shirt. The mood shift from last night to this morning seems like a barrier Nico has easily glided through while Marti is still stuck on the other side.

Caught off guard, the fabric just hits Marti in the face and he narrowly catches it before it reaches the floor.

Nico must sense the doubt. His smile falters, and he paces towards Marti.

“I’m sorry if I freaked you out last night,” he says, less playful but not any softer. Stoic and honest.

Ah. Marti can see now that his smiles and animated attitude might be a way to make up for the things he’s scared of. Or the things he’s sorry about.

(Not that that’s what has Marti tense, and not that Marti would ever blame Nico for getting emotional about the likely end of the world.)

Nico reaches forward to touch Marti on the shoulder, his hand dragging down his upper arm before he pulls back and waits for a response.

It radiates all the way down to Marti’s fingertips.

“It’s okay,” Marti starts, but it’s a half-truth. Some things are okay — Nico being one of them. But most things are not. “I’m just tired still,” he sort of lies. 

Yesterday seems like a manic fantasyland of distraction. But it was very real. Marti’s running on one cup of coffee, Nico’s voice, and the dwindling high from a stolen painting and a piss in the Pope’s bathroom. And last he checked, distraction is not fuel. He’s going to crash eventually, but he can’t give it all up at once.

“So, food?” Marti prompts, and he sees Nico dip his head down with a slight, grateful grin. Back up with it reaching his eyes.

Nico does this thing, Marti notices — he didn’t notice it yesterday, but he notices it now on their walk to the grocery store. In moments where Marti most craves it — craves comfort at the sight and sound and feeling of how overwhelmingly empty everything is — Nico touches him. Usually in the same places: knees bumping together, hands on shoulders. (Marti’s entire side and arm still smolder from Nico’s leg against him last night.)

And in a way it never did with Gio. In a way that almost tries to clairvoyantly tell him something is there — something shared if he would just let it bloom. 

_(Simulation. Simulation. Simulation.)_

At this point, he doesn’t care. He revels in it, as it’s the only thing keeping him tethered to the ground. The nagging voice telling him if he doesn’t do something about it soon this might turn into a weird, personal hell is but a muffled whisper he gags by pressing it down.

It’s too soon. If this is a simulation, there will be a perfect moment.

Nico does it now, too — hand on the middle of his back as he moves around Marti through the sliding doors to grab one of the small, red wheeled carts. He is so acutely aware of it, Marti wonders if he were to take his own shirt off and look in a mirror whether his skin would be patchy with how hot and cold it feels — if hand and fingerprints would be red and detailed on his skin at how clearly they linger.

Nico scrunches his nose subtly in disgust as they enter. “I didn’t think about how all of this stuff is going to go bad,” he mentions disappointedly with a pursed, crooked mouth.

Marti looks at all the produce, the stuff that should have been thrown out last night still sitting in the bins. The rest isn’t far behind, it probably only has a couple days at best before it all rots. Same with the meat, he thinks. And the milk.

“What should we do?” Marti asks.

Nico lets out a sharp breath with his bottom lip sticking out, a stray curl on his forehead moving with it. “I don’t want to think about that now,” he chuckles. He starts walking down one of the aisles — the one with chocolate and wine. “We can grow our own vegetables,” he smiles, wobbling his head and looking at Marti — shoveling an entire armful of candy into the cart and not bothering to care if any of it fell on the floor. “Raise our own chickens —”

“I have no idea how to do any of that,” Marti admits rather untroubled, as if neither of them are serious right now. “And there’s no internet.”

Nico — dramatically rolling his eyes and continuing down the aisle, throwing random things into the cart — looks back at Marti with an equally fond and annoyed grin. “There are these things,” he teases slowly, dragging out the words as he places his hand on Marti’s chest and gives a playful push, “called books.”

Marti’s face goes a little pink.

Nico notices. “Here, _I’ll_ read the books about gardening and whatever because apparently, you don’t even know what they are —”

This time, Marti’s the one who reaches out and shoves the back of his shoulder.

Nico turns back, fake offended (and maybe a little surprised) with his mouth open and chin tucked in. He pushes away the hair falling into his face. “— and you can cook the vegetables,” he continues with narrowed eyes and his tongue over his bottom teeth, pressing against his lip in a smile. “Unless you like your vegetables with hot sauce and honey.” He shrugs.

“So you’re not a cook,” Marti points out. 

Responsibly, Marti starts grabbing useful items off the shelves as they wander through, trying to find a place for them in the cart amongst the treats and copious amounts of wine: pasta, cheese, frozen things; things they actually need to live.

“I get bored,” Nico deadpans. “We’ll need to get a cow, too,” he remembers, smiling at Marti as he picks up a container of cream. “I’ll make you a cappuccino when we get back. I _can_ make those.”

“Well, now I don’t know if I can trust you,” Marti laughs.

“Can _you_ make a cappuccino?” Nico asks, raising his eyebrows.

“I can push the cappuccino button on the espresso maker.”

“Well,” Nico huffs, rather unimpressed. He turns the carton in his hand and looks for the expiration date on it. “You’ve got, according to this, two more days to decide if you trust me enough to ever have another one again.”

“Until we get a cow,” Marti reminds him, tipping his head to the side. He feels his eyes lower and the tops of his lips pinch in before he presses them together in a giddy smile. 

This whole conversation is ridiculous and flying a bit over Marti’s head, considering he can barely wrap it around the fact yesterday was a thing. Today is too. And tomorrow will be as well. And the next day. And the next — turning into weeks and months and years.

That they’ll have to worry about things like whether or not they can find a cow to satisfy their cappuccino cravings.

Nico smiles. “Until we get a cow,” he repeats, nods. 

He’s hard to read, but if Marti had to guess, he’s feeling about the same way.

They don’t bother with bags and just wheel the cart back to Nico’s. Which is a stupid idea, they learn, because once they’re faced with the task of stairs, they each grab a side of it to carry up only a few before a bottle of wine falls out and shatters everywhere, deep red running in the grout of the tile on the landing. They silent laugh, as if afraid someone might hear them, and settle for carrying armfuls of stuff up in multiple trips, slightly out of breath by the end of it.

Marti starts putting the groceries away in the freezer, in the cabinets — still not quite sure where everything should go but making his best guess. Nico helps at first, and they dance around each other in the small space as they get in each other’s way. But eventually, he wanders off to the shelves at the back by the counter and rummages through stacks of papers and cookbooks, producing a sheet of yellow, lined paper and a black pen.

Nico sits at the head of the kitchen table with it, and Marti hears the scratch of writing.

“What are you doing?” He asks, curious, closing the freezer with his foot and squinting towards Nico. He takes a step forward to get a better look.

Nico’s drawn a single, straight line down the length of the paper, dividing it in half. Towards the top on one side is a smiley face, on the other, a frowny face.

“Making a list,” Nico points out, tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth in concentration while he adds details to the faces.

“A list of what?” Marti laughs, curious. He pulls out the chair opposite Nico on the corner and sits next to him.

“We have some chores to do,” Nico looks up, his eyebrows disappearing into the mop of curls on his forehead with a smirk. He points to the frowny face with the end of his pen and writes the word _library_ under the sad face. When Marti looks at him confused, Nico says, “I know you have no idea what this is, but it’s a place with a lot of books that —”

Interrupting him, Marti reaches for his pen but Nico snatches it away with wide eyes and an open-mouthed smile — that kind where his bottom jaw drops in a bit of surprise. Marti keeps reaching over the table, eventually standing to sprawl across it, but ultimately fails to grab it from Nico who is now holding it above his head.

“Okay, fine,” Nico snickers. “No more book jokes.” He dabs the ink of the pen on the tip of Marti’s nose before writing _cow_ under _library._

“Are you being serious right now?” Marti asks, sitting back down and looking at the list.

“Oh,” Nico starts. “I’m being very serious right now.”

He writes _grocery store_ under _cow_ — “We’ll need to get all the stuff that won’t go bad out and put it somewhere,” he explains — and _apartment hunt_ under that. 

“What’s the smile side for?” Marti asks, crossing his arms in front of him, elbows resting on the table while he nods towards the list.

“Fun stuff,” Nico explains, shrugging. “Stealing paintings and peeing in the Pope’s toilet stuff.” But he doesn’t write anything on that side yet, he continues on the chores side, scribbling _teach Marti how to drive_ and _move the cars._

Marti can’t help but smile seeing his own name written down like that; Nico’s handwriting is all pretty loops in a clumsy script. 

“So I’m a chore?”

God, he’s teasing Nico. It just comes out, he can’t stop it — doesn’t even think twice to stop it. He is the best distraction. Marti’s cheeks heat up at how blatant his words sound hanging in the air.

“Of course,” Nico blinks without missing a beat, like it’s obvious. “You think I’m glad you’re here or something?”

There’s a mutual moment of understanding where their smiles mirror each other and they look down before they look up. Because it’s spiked with the truth, and they both know it. Internally at first, and now Marti is glad to learn how reciprocated it is — how maybe Nico is just as addicted to the comfort of Marti’s physical presence as Marti is to the sound of his voice; Nico afraid of the space around him, Marti afraid of the silence. How throughout this short time, they’ve both had little reality checks now and again to make sure that if this _is_ reality, at least they’re both still here. How if the structure of a dream or a simulation slipped away, who knows if it would get better or worse.

Nico scribbles it out and rewrites _teach Marti how to drive_ under the smiley face.

 

 

 

 

#### vi. rely

Pick me up / Brush all the dust from my face / Staring straight into a love sought for so long / Different shapes than I expect / Simpler still than all my dreams / Settling so perfectly in front of me

###### 

Nico puts the list on the refrigerator, and almost a week later the only thing crossed off is ~~_grocery store._ ~~~~~~

Which they ended up half-assing, just chucking the bins of old produce into the compost container right outside the front of the building where it will spoil and smell anyway without someone to come pick it up. Same with all the meat and chilled items that were bad or will go bad before they could be eaten.

So, at least they can walk into the place to get stuff without having their noses assaulted and without dragging a bunch of food up the stairs. But they could have been more strategic about it.

(He has a feeling a lot of the “chores” will remain uncrossed. Also still rather unsure if finding a cow is a joke or not.)

Marti stares at it after he turns the stove on for the moka pot, leaning against the table. Within the past few days, he’s learned how to move around the apartment better.

Yesterday, he volunteered to clean Nico’s parent’s room and rid it of the clothes and shoes (and purses and scarves and knick-knacks and ties and perfumes and jewelry and oh my god they have so much stuff), collecting it all into bags and suitcases and cramming it neatly under the bed so Nico wouldn’t have to. 

He opened the window, lit a candle, and tried to rid it of its familiar smell, too — like men’s cologne and washed cotton and delicate old leather. And while most stuff went under the bed, Marti left a few things in the top drawer of the dresser (a framed picture, a collared shirt from the bin of dirty laundry, and what he assumes is his mom’s purse) just in case. So that way not _everything_ was shoved out of sight like it meant nothing.

And then Marti moved all of the furniture, too. The bed faces the opposite wall, now, followed by the nightstands. And the dresser moved adjacent. He swapped some pictures from the living room to make it different enough.

And now it seems like a whole new, but still slightly familiar room.

It only seemed like the nice thing, seeing as he’d rather not have to do that particular task at home either — Marti wouldn’t want to bring up any old memories. Or touch his mom’s bras.

So now he’s been able to fill it with his own stuff.

Well. Sort of. Marti still hasn’t taken Nico’s bike to go back _home_ and get his own stuff. Instead, he’s now the owner of an eclectic mix of pharmacy toiletries and tourist boutique clothes from the shops downstairs and in the neighborhood.

(It’s really nice, honestly. Need new underwear? Don’t feel like doing laundry? Just go outside, pick any shop, and grab some new ones.)

The thing is though, Nico’s sort of moved into his parent’s room too. It was never discussed or planned, it just became a pattern one too many times until it seemed awkward to break. Of course, there was the first night. And then the night after that they fell asleep wine drunk and dizzy in the exact same position, drowning the idea that they had made it through another day. And since then it’s just been a thing. They lay in reverse directions — Nico’s head at the foot of the bed opposite Marti. Waking up with faces in the soft backs of knees or with forearms flushed against thighs. Unintentionally. But also maybe subconsciously. (At least on Marti’s part. If he wakes up in the middle of the night like that, well, he blames being too tired to move.)

The list has a few new additions. Mostly on the smiley face side, under _teach Marti how to drive: Race motorcycles down Via del Corso. Steal Gucci suits. Sunbathe in the Trevi Fountain._

But Marti can’t put it off any longer. He should go get his stuff. He should throw away the food in his house. He should grab some of his mom’s things to hold onto in the event of a meteor strike or an alien invasion or a lethal virus — it might be the end of the world, after all. None of this really seems necessary, but he doesn’t want to admit the reasoning behind it.

Closure.

For the first time in a while, grief blurs the edges of his line of sight. It’s sharp and sudden this time, like a reminder it hasn’t gone away no matter how distracted he tries to make himself. Similar to a festering wound, every day away from his home is like a day without ointment or a bandage, left to the elements. It’ll either rot with neglect or sting with treatment eventually.

Maybe it’s because he’s currently in the house alone right now. His mind has wandered far enough without the sound of Nico’s voice to lead him off the edge of a cliff.

But it must be done. With shaky hands, Marti writes _grab stuff from home_ under the frowny face side of the list. It’s weirdly cathartic, and he has to talk himself out of just writing it down being enough.

When Marti starts to smell the espresso, he takes it off the stove and quickly pours it into two cups, sugar in both. Nico should be back any second, hopefully before it cools.

Brushing the hypothetical apocalypse aside for one minute, which might make anyone feel out of character, Marti finds himself tapping his feet anxiously while he waits for Nico. Marti is friendly, he likes people, but he usually finds himself craving alone time. He’s always had a few places he goes to be by himself: Janiculum hill; the little nook by the window in his room; his couch on an empty afternoon, FIFA on the screen. Even at school it wasn’t unusual for him to stay in the classroom over break while everyone trickled out and his friends went to get coffee at the vending machine. Just to get a few moments of silence. Sometimes it was intentional, sometimes it wasn’t. 

(What Marti doesn’t realize is that he tends to isolate himself.)

 _(Simulation. Simulation. Simulation._ God it won’t stop. It’s like his self-destructing comfort and biggest insecurity rolled into one.)

It seems that wherever he goes he’s always seeking out a spot. _His_ spot. To tuck away to just in case.

But it’s not like that at Nico’s. They’ve really made a fast little home here. So much so, they’ve defaulted back to a few comfortable routines.

Nico going for a morning run being one of them — he took the bike to Villa Borghese to jog on the path there.

(Nico tried to convince him to come with, but dragging a bleary-eyed and semi-conscious Marti out of bed for _exercise_ is not necessarily the most tempting bait.)

Marti sets the steaming mugs on the table right when he hears the door open, dusting his hands on his pants and turning around to greet Nico —

— who bypasses the kitchen entirely. There are fast footsteps and the sound of the bathroom door squeaking open further down the hall. He doesn’t hear it close behind Nico, but the bathtub starts to run and there’s a soft, strained groan. 

Heart rate picking up, Marti goes to investigate — the bike is lying on its side in the middle of the living room by the couch, front wheel spinning in little clicks. And when he reaches the bathroom, the door swung wide open, Nico is shirtless and examining a large, red-yellow bruise down the left side of his ribs. Marti can almost see it turn purple with every passing second. Nico touches it with bloody, scraped palms, flinching. His pants are messed up too — the left leg torn open from knee to thigh where an equally ugly wound lacerates up his skin. Blood spots out of the thousands of tiny, shallow cuts.

“What happened?” Marti blurts, his eyes going wide as he leans himself in the doorway. There’s a frenzy in him to help, but he’s rooted in place with shock.

“Oh,” Nico laughs, “I… fell off the bike. Pretty bad,” he snorts before wincing, trying to play it off.

It’s never occurred to Marti that if one of them were to break a bone, get severely ill, need surgery… they’re completely helpless. Looking Nico over, a tiny bit of relief crawls through him at the fact he’s at least standing. Able to talk. Able to move. It looks worse than it probably is.

“Here,” Marti scoots around Nico in front of the sink and turns the water to the bath off. He pats the edge of the tub for Nico to sit and yanks a towel off a peg on the back of the door and wets it in the water.

He hands it to Nico, who’s gingerly taking his pants off, wary of the wound.

Marti feels nothing but shame at the way his ears ring and his heart picks up at all the skin.

“Do you have, um,” Marti swallows, trying to focus, “wrap? Or, bandages?”

Nico taps the drawer under the sink with his foot, taking the wet towel from Marti and hobbling over to the tub. He sits on the edge of it, feet in the water.

Helpless, Marti barely knows what he’s looking for. There’s a bunch of salves, small band-aids, scissors, bottles of pills — a proper first aid kit. He grabs what he’s pretty sure is a roll of gauze and a familiar looking tube of ointment his mom used to rub on his scraped knees when he was a kid.

He sits to Nico’s left on the edge of the tub, facing the opposite way with his feet on the tile floor. 

The towel is saturated pink with blood as Nico dabs the wound, excess running down his leg into the water. The cuts from the scrape are shallow, but they won’t stop bleeding.

Marti turns a bit, angles himself so his front is facing Nico more. He motions for Nico to do the same, patting his lap for Nico to rest his foot on.

He grimaces when he moves, a sharp inhale that makes him clutch his ribs. Slowly, Nico rests a wet foot on Marti’s lap, his leg bent up with the scrape above his knee to the top of his thigh airborne. His other leg stays in place in the tub, steadying himself.

“Have you ever done this before?” Marti asks, fiddling with the ointment as he starts squeezing it out just above Nico’s knee, gently dabbing it on the skin with his fingertips. His face gets hot when he has to touch the inside of Nico’s thigh. It’s a little soft, a little warmer, the hairs there are finer.

“No,” Nico breathes out, a tiny laugh. It’s reassuring, although Marti doesn’t know who Nico is trying to make feel better.

“Well,” Marti continues, raising his eyebrows and chuckling at his own honesty. “I have no idea what I’m doing.” He turns to find the gauze, stretching it out and placing an end under Nico’s knee, wrapping tightly upwards.

“It’s okay,” Nico rests his head back against the tile wall, eyes closed in a wince at the slight movement. “Thank you.”

Marti uses both hands to alternate the roll of wrapping above and under Nico’s upper leg, going over it double or triple in some places and pulling taut to stop the bleeding. As he focuses and the motion becomes repetitive — as the worry and the adrenaline start to fade with the settling that everything is going to be okay — his hands start to shake when his eyes calm enough to adjust.

He tries to keep looking at the wound, concentrate on doing this one thing. But he can’t help notice the space between Nico’s legs is warmer as he wraps upwards. Can’t help but flicker his eyes over the muscles of Nico’s middle, or the ones around his hips. His underwear is blue. And small. It rides low below his belly button. If Marti were to look for a second longer than he allows himself, he bet he could see the outline of everything with Nico’s legs spread like this.

He doesn’t have to guess how red his face is, because he can feel the color in his cheeks and temples and chin flood with heat at the thought.

His hands graze the very insides of Nico’s thigh — it would be intimate if it weren’t medical.

When he’s done, he tucks the loose end of the gauze into the wrapped part on top. It’s probably not the proper way to do it, but for now it’s good enough.

“The ribs?” Marti asks, looking at the bruise that’s starting to turn into a deep purple gradient.

“I might have broken one,” Nico says honestly. His breathing is a little staggered, and his eyes shut tighter at the thought of moving. So he doesn’t. “I think I just need to lay down. But my hands.”

He holds his hands out, which are also filled with tiny, red scratches from trying to break his fall on his palms. Marti wraps those, too.

“You have to be careful,” Marti reminds him. It’s not a scold. And he’s calmed down enough to think a little more rationally, but the thought of something worse happening makes his insides feel cold. The thought of a cold bed. Cold house. Cold Rome.

He thinks Nico understands, is putting himself in Marti’s shoes. Each other is all they have.

“Promise me?” Marti prompts.

Nico — head still leaned back against the wall — smiles enough that it parts his lips so Marti can see his teeth. His whole body bounces a little with a chuckle, and he leans forward through a cringe at the pain to look Marti in the eye. He holds up one pinky.

Marti just raises his eyebrow, confused.

“Pinky promise,” Nico nods, like it’s obvious.

“Pinky promise?” Marti repeats, still confused.

“Here,” Nico huffs, fake annoyed, and he reaches for Marti’s hand and intertwines their pinkies together. Then, he brings their laced hands up to his own face and kisses the tip of his own thumb. Nico motions for Marti to do the same.

Skeptical, Marti pulls their hands towards him, kissing the pad of his thumb.

“Then,” Nico explains, bending their hands closer together, “you just touch your thumbs while your pinkies are together…” He taps the tip of Marti’s thumb with his own. “And ta-da. A pinky promise.”

“Okay,” Marti laughs. He waits for Nico to let go first, which takes a little longer than he was expecting. So many hot spots on his skin right now, under heat vision he probably looks like a leopard.

“You do it when you really mean it,” Nico smiles. “It’s a promise that can’t be broken.”

 

 

 

 

#### vii. unsaid

Can't be my selfish nature / Can't be my sin / Are these feelings I long for best left unsaid? / Nothing hurts when you hide away / Let 'em in and they'll bring the pain / But something about you feels okay / Comfort can't help me grow up anyways

###### 

The first time Marti kisses Nico, it’s in a dream.

And it happens as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, as if they’ve done it a million times before. It’s slow — a long, smushy peck with their curls tangling as their foreheads touch. Lazy and uncomplicated and comfortable when they smile into it. In this dream, they’ve been together for an eternity. And they’re in love.

It’s more painful to wake up from it than it was the morning Marti woke up completely alone. Maybe because the feeling melts away slowly — bleary-eyed, Marti’s still relatively convinced he could kiss the sleeping Niccolò next to him as if it were for the hundredth time.

But he can’t. The reality of the dream fades away but the emotions it evokes stay.

Niccolò, opposite Marti with his head down by his feet, is asleep on his right side with his knees brought up, legs crossed at the ankles. His hair is a wild mess, his mouth is parted, his shirt rides up his stomach.

Marti just looks at him for a minute, pangs of fondness and heartache taking turns to flip his stomach into a bow. _Cute_ pops into his head again. 

It’ll settle down when the sparkly, fluffy parts of his dream become cloudy. (Or maybe it just ignited a flame inside his stomach. It burns the bottom of his heart.)

Marti’s past the point of “cute boy crush” territory now. He is in too deep, drowning in Niccolò’s voice, in the things he says, in his smile and the way he makes Marti both laugh and scratch his head in confusion. The one feeling from the dream that’s crossed over the bridge of reality is how Marti feels like he’s known Nico all his life.

Suddenly, he feels restless. Like he needs to splash his cheeks with cold water and then slap himself in the face. So, gingerly, he gets up off the bed and starts slowly stepping towards the door.

“Where are you going?” Nico’s soft, tired voice rings out. It’s deep both in tone and with sleep. He sounds a touch worried and a touch curious. And a touch too drowsy to really care.

Marti stops in the doorway and turns around. “Just to get some water,” he reassures.

“Will you bring me back some?” 

“Yeah, of course,” Marti nods, earnest.

Nico mumbles something that sounds like _thank you._

In the kitchen, Marti runs the sink — filling a glass before using the stream to cup his hands under and wash his face. It wakes him up, it snaps him a little further out of dream world. 

The cold water doesn’t help his heart, though, still swollen and tender with lingering visions of what could have been.

And they’ll always have to live in this sort of intimacy. Marti will always go back to his bed. They’ll always share meals. They’ll always talk. They’ll always be all they have. Marti might never get over Niccolò if it’s going to be like this forever, and it’s a shame that’s currently a worry he has, seeing as he’s just starting to fall.

Marti sticks his whole face under the faucet. He ponders Niccolò’s dream theory and wonders if a sudden splash of cold water is one of his reality checks. Like how they do in cartoons.

Which brings Marti back to the only reality check he’s thought of for himself if his simulation hypothesis is true: to live his truth.

And the only person he could tell is Niccolò. Which sounds so tempting — too good to be true if it _were_ a simulation and that was the answer. And also frightening as hell, because if he’s wrong? Then he’s fucked everything up; he’ll have to live in his own mess for good.

He turns the sink off — feeling as if he hasn’t yet washed away all of his thoughts like he wanted — and grabs the glass of water, moving towards the room.

If not for that, he wonders if he’d be strong enough to spend the rest of the night on the couch — surely a better option if he wants to detach from his feelings for a while; they’ll do nothing but fester with Nico beside him. But probably not. Niccolò is like a weight on all of his unease. An addictive pressure.

When Marti pushes the door to the room open, Nico is awake. He leans his head back and looks at Marti with a tired, tiny smile.

This is kind of all Marti has ever wanted. To come back to a sleep-warm bed in the middle of the night with a drowsy, comfy boy in it. It sucks that the pretense he’s getting it in is 1) unattainable and 2) during the end of the world. The dream he had, with details fading fast, still lingers in the deep neurons of his brain, jolting the memory of it when Nico looks so much like he did in that alternate plane of existence.

Nico winces when he tries to lean up and grab the water from Marti.

“Here,” Marti cautions, pushing his shoulder back down. “Don’t get up.” He kneels down beside the foot of the bed, their faces level now. He rests his own head on the mattress, mirroring Niccolò’s in reverse. Chins and eyes in opposite directions. It’s always like that.

Marti puts the glass in Nico’s face, tips it forward.

“What are you doing?” Nico giggles, but he opens his mouth anyway and lets Marti give him a drink. He ends up laughing after one gulp, the water dribbling everywhere out of his mouth and on to his shirt and the sheets.

“Close your mouth!” Marti snorts, pulling the glass away. “I’m trying to be nice.”

“I know, I know,” Nico almost chokes, motioning for another drink. “Thank you. I just feel like a two-year-old.”

“You just shouldn’t move so much,” Marti mumbles. “Or you won’t heal.” He glances at Nico’s ribs, wondering what the bruise looks like now under his shirt.

“I’ll be fine,” Nico smiles, but there’s a little fleck of worry in his dark eyes. He says it to comfort both himself and Marti, who really has no idea if everything will be fine.

Marti drinks some of the water too, setting the empty glass on the floor beside him. He stays kneeling on the floor, relaxing and sitting on his own feet, legs bent. He supports his head with crossed arms on the mattress, face still opposite Nico’s.

“You know what I really want?” Nico tilts his head back and forth a few times, a mischievous smile on his face. 

“What?” Marti asks, voice fatigued but curious.

“There’s this place in Piazza delle Coppelle that makes the best gnocchi. With pears and gorgonzola.” He turns his head, looks up to the ceiling, and sighs as if he’s daydreaming.

Marti just gives him a skeptical look. “Pears? In gnocchi?”

Nico swings his head back to look at him. “I promise you it’s good.” He closes his eyes while he breathes a deep, disappointed exhale. “I just realized I’ll never get to have it again.”

Marti smirks. “Says who?”

Okay, he’s never thought of putting pears in gnocchi, but Marti knows at least how to _make_ gnocchi. Before things went to shit at home — before his mom started to get really anxious and shut herself in and before his dad left — you’d almost recognize them as a normal family. They didn’t have a lot of money, but they did have a lot of love. And, before depression crippled his mother (Marti was too young to realize his dad was having an affair long before he left — was too young to realize his mom knew but said nothing), her favorite thing to do was cook.

(Warmth fills his chest at the nostalgia. But it’s rather bleak, being overridden with grief and guilt. He wishes he could apologize to her.)

And on Thursdays, they made gnocchi. Marti would peel the potatoes while his mom simmered the sauce. When he got a little older, he practically made it all — kneading the eggs and flour together, rolling the small pieces of dough on the back of a fork to give them some ridges — while she drank tea by the counter, chatting with her sister on the phone. 

Now, all of those individual Thursdays seem rolled into one, single memory.

But the last time he made gnocchi was years ago.

For a long time, Nico doesn’t answer him. His gaze stays fixed on the ceiling, and his brows tighten together like something had just made him angry. “Nevermind,” he hisses — nonchalantly but rather urgently, his voice deep and sharp and quick. Like he regrets bringing it up at all.

It throws Marti off guard, but not so much he still wants to give up the idea Nico just planted in his brain.

“We could go get the recipe,” Marti suggests.

Nico’s eyebrows unknot, and he looks over at him. His face softens, like he’s thankful for the offer — like this tangent of conversation didn’t have to end so sour. 

“Yeah?” He asks. “You trust me not to ruin it with hot sauce?” And now he’s joking, a little of that playful wickedness back.

“Oh,” Marti drops his voice, wagging one finger under his chin as he smiles. “You’re not making it.”

Smiling — the soft kind that takes over his whole body — Nico’s whole head bounces with an inaudible chuckle. He looks up as it happens before back to Marti, like it’s half to himself, something unsaid lingering behind it. 

Marti would like nothing more than to brush the curls on Nico’s forehead out of his face, to run his thumb along the side of his cheek. To comfort his obvious doubt and worry and frustrations. The lingering traces of his dream stretch from his brain cells to his skin cells, tingling to touch like an instinct. As if it were second nature. 

Nico pats the mattress beside him, and Marti smiles back — crawling up onto it. Laying opposite.

• • •

“I can just go get it.” Marti’s talking about the recipe, and he’s skeptical. Piazza delle Coppelle isn’t too far away, but he’s worried about Nico’s ribs.

Spring is here now, the first day Marti can feel it. it only took a week to fully thaw into the warmth. The mornings are no longer brisk and the sun stays out in the evening long past eight, the twilight past nine. Right now it’s sunk just into the window, orange and blinding and lazy, letting them know they only have a few hours of light left.

But Nico is adamant. “No, I want to sit in the dining room! It has the coolest chandelier.”

They’re smoking — just a little bit. Nico’s rolled a joint with half tobacco. It fills the room all hazy, the sun streaks through it like Marti could reach out and touch it. It smells nice, too, like cloves and earth. Nico says it helps with the pain.

Marti’s only pleasantly buzzed. His thoughts whir slightly, but he’s able to reign them in before spiraling into nonsense. The soft, cracked leather couch beneath them, though, feels exceptionally snug and homey. Nico’s head rests on one of the arms, feet in Marti’s lap on the other end.

(It’s cozy. Like they’re suspended in a softly sunny, blurry daydream. Honestly, Marti has no idea what day of the week it is. But it looks like how a Sunday afternoon feels.)

Their position is friendly. Not unlike how Gio might have sprawled out on the couch with Marti.

Because that’s what they are. Marti and Nico are friends. And Marti doesn’t feel any pain at that word. There’s no _just_ or _only_ before it in his mind. Being friends with Niccolò is comfortable, and it feels nice. The same way Marti and Gio were friends — sometimes yearning would nip at Marti’s ankles, but he was always able to kick it away. Able to enjoy the good parts. Able to be thankful for what he had.

“Plus,” Nico inhales, holding in his last hit before ashing the butt of the joint in a small glass dish on the coffee table, “we have an errand to run first.”

Marti raises an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? What?”

Nico exhales, smoke with it that reveals a smile. “It’s on the list,” he teases. “Help me up.” He draws his legs back off of Marti (whose lap in burning from hips to knees at the long pressure of Nico’s calves on him) and reaches his arms up, hands flexing twice like he wants Marti to grab them.

He does after he gets off the couch, hoisting Nico up who winces and inhales sharply.

“We can always just do it later…” Marti trails, still not fully convinced Nico should be up at all.

“No,” Nico waves him off unbothered with a little pout, limping for a step before steadying himself and motioning a hand for Marti to follow him into the kitchen. “This is the perfect time.”

He walks over to the list on the fridge, grabs the pen, and crosses off ~~_Steal Gucci suits._~~ Marti thinks he sees Nico’s eyes linger on the newest addition to the chores side of the list he added yesterday, because he freezes for a second. But Nico turns around just as smiley and suspicious as before.

“Because we have to dress up for dinner,” he says it quickly, nonchalantly, and looking down with a little laugh. Explaining himself when Marti didn’t ask for it.

If Marti’s not mistaken, Nico’s cheeks actually get a little pink.

He still doesn’t think this is the best idea right now with Nico in the condition that he is — especially when they have literally all of forever to wander around Rome and steal designer clothes and whatever else Nico wants to do. But his face is so eager — his mouth pursed in that thinking smile with his head tilted to the side like a puppy.

“Okay,” Marti agrees, feeling something fond and mushy spread through him. He can’t say no to Nico. “Let’s go.”

Nico’s fine when he’s standing. And moving. It’s just the getting up and down part that makes him flinch in pain. Marti changed the wrap on his leg this morning, too, because he can’t bend over very well.

So he makes it down the stairs okay, and once they’ve crossed the Tiber Marti wouldn’t even have noticed Nico was in pain at all. He just walks a little slower, but still talks with his same enthusiasm — fast and animated with lots of smiles and lots of nudging Marti’s shoulder with his own. They walk into the Tridente neighborhood, past the tomb of Augustus and into the thick of shops on narrow, cobblestone streets broken apart by the three wide avenues branching out from Pizza del Popolo.

Marti thinks it’s a little morbid to consider how the emptiness makes this area — one he’s never liked much really — rather beautiful. But it does.

They don’t know exactly where it is, but after some wandering they find the store right in front of Piazza di Spagna.

“Door’s unlocked,” Nico notes, holding it open for Marti. He gestures him in with a swooping arm and a head bow. “Ladies first.”

Marti, feeling anything but attacked at the remark, cranes his neck as he walks through the door to shoot Nico a death glare that probably looks more like a lopsided smile with squinty eyes — definitely not the effect he’s going for. But it still works, because it makes Nico laugh. The teasing is getting to him.

The shop is bigger on the inside than it looks, with high ceilings and fancy red carpet. Decadently dressed mannequins line the windows — the trendy and avant-garde clothes and accessories towards the front, gradually getting more formal as the store recedes. Nico leads the way towards the back like he’s been here before, dozens of colors of men’s suits and shirts and ties on the back wall from floor to ceiling.

“I’m thinking for you,” Nico hums, pointer finger on his lips as he thinks, “navy.” He throws a jacket at Marti decidedly, who lets it flop over his shoulder as he catches it.

He looks at the price tag. €2,500. Just for the jacket.

“And for me,” Nico continues, rifling through a rack. He makes an excited sound after brushing a row of black pieces aside, eyes wide when it seems like he’s found what he’s looking for. “Emerald green. Unless you want green? No. I think you’d look better in blue.” He says it mostly to himself, talking fast and quiet.

Marti just lets him choose, picking out all the individual pieces and colors and finding the correct sizes: no tie for Marti, and the full three pieces and a bowtie for Nico. He seems to be having fun, and while Marti really couldn’t care about clothes, he’s having fun watching Nico.

Who’s now starting to take his pants off right in front of Marti. His shirt too. Stripping down fully until he’s left in only his boxers. 

Frozen, Marti has to force himself to peel his eyes away. Nico’s smaller than him, but he still seems to take up more space somehow — maybe it’s not physical. But whatever it is, Marti feels like he’s in a room with nowhere to turn except right into Nico. Into his hair, his skin. No matter where he looks, Nico is burned into the back of his eyelids: lean muscles, long eyelashes, bright smile. Cheeks getting red, seeping down into the rest of him, he’s starting to get turned on in both equal parts visceral and emotional.

And yeah, Nico’s beautiful. But he’s also bruised. And a little bloody.

He undresses in slow, sometimes jerky motions when he lifts his arms over his head, with sharp breaths in and eyes scrunched. He’s in pain. His ribs looks bad: black and blue, and the bandage on his leg need changing again. Marti can see blood turned brown on the top of his thigh through the gauze.

“Are you okay?” Marti asks, taking a step closer to him. He shouldn’t have allowed this to happen. They shouldn’t have come here. They should go home. Nico should be resting.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Nico pants, a little winded from just this. He says it like he means it, flinching when he shakes his foot out of his pant leg. “Here, help me.”

He tosses Marti the pants draped over his arm, motioning for Marti to come closer so he can balance on him. 

So Marti can dress him.

Marti’s ears start to sear, the heat traveling into all the odd corners of his face once it’s taken up the entirety of his cheeks. His palms burn, too, and it’s only now that he’s hyper aware of how hot and cold he is, every part of Nico that’s ever touched him flaring like a memory map on his skin. The hottest part being Nico’s hand currently on his shoulder.

Carefully, Marti helps him put his feet into the legs of the pants, pulling them up his thighs so he doesn’t have to bend over. Helps him throw shirts over his head, stretching them down so the backs of his hands graze Nico’s stomach. Helps him button all the buttons. And while doing so, he’s forced to touch Nico — to let him lean on him, to steady him. To place his hands on the skin of his middle, chest, and shoulders, always wary of his injury. He’s so close he can smell him. And Marti realizes he’s never actually been close enough to do that before. It makes his mouth go dry, all the moisture leaking out of his palms. His brain is one constant note of white noise.

“Your turn,” Nico smiles once he’s finally dressed, turning his head over his shoulder as he wanders over to the shoes. It’s as if he’s implying he’ll help Marti as well, but he leaves Marti to it as he drops a pair of brown slip-ons to the ground, sliding his feet into them.

And Marti, although probably imagining it, watches Nico steal glances at him while he gets undressed. Short ones that become distracted around his stomach, dragging ones across his shoulders. Nico’s mouth looks parted helplessly, a tongue on his bottom lip before he shuts it and looks into Marti’s eyes with a subtle, puckered smile.

Nico stands up straight, head locking into place after a quick bobble, and sticks his bent arm out. “Shall we?” He asks.

_It’s a date._

Marti’s mind whispers it before he can tell it not to. And looking at them — dressed up and heading to dinner (one that he’ll have to cook himself, but still), it’s now hard to convince himself that’s not what this is.

(Or maybe what Nico planned it to be? Marti should stop thinking such dangerous things.)

Especially when Marti is too helpless not to take Nico’s arm, linking it with his own so their elbows lock and they step out the door into Piazza di Spagna, the cobblestones muted grey with the red light of the setting sun making all the highlights a dusty pink — _(romantic_ Marti’s brain unhelpfully supplies) — too helpless not to return his smile when they do, feeling his face go soft and cheery, his eyes go big and sparkly. He knows his feelings are written all over his face.

On the tip of his tongue. Trapped there.

 

 

 

 

#### viii. spoiled

Oh, it feels like a story / In the parts where everything's lost pace / I can see the details now / See the plot unfold and it all go to waste / And I get the feeling like I won't get everything that I want / And I know that now, so what is it that's keeping me down? / And I get the feeling like I won't get everything that I want / And I know that now, so what is it that's keeping me spoiled?

###### 

Nico leads them to Piazza delle Coppelle, arm in arm. It’s about a fifteen minute walk south through some of Rome’s twistiest streets. And being alone in them makes it almost magical. The first time Marti has thought that about the emptiness.

“It’s this one,” Nico points out once they’ve reached an unsuspecting building on the corner of the piazza, pulling the iron door laced with filigie open to step through a lacey curtain that almost kisses the floor.

(Yeah, this is definitely where you would go on a date.)

All of the lights inside are off except for the glow of the kitchen immediately towards the back. They can see it through the glass pane of the swinging doors. When pushed open, everything is tucked away except for one rotten tomato melted over a cutting board on one of the long, shiny steel prep tables. Never finished before the inevitable happened.

Open cabinets hang from the ceiling above, filled with cutting boards, bins, binders full of plastic sheets with folded recipes tucked inside them. Some printed, some handwritten. Nico reaches up to start rifling through them, standing on his tiptoes facing the edge of the table.

Marti leans his back to it, sort of sitting on the table with his front facing position opposite Nico’s. He’s got a few extra centimeters on him, and he snatches the binder just tipping down into Nico’s fingertips. 

Nico tries to give him an icy glare, but with his smile it turns more mischievous than anything, reaching up to his eyes until it goes from sly to suspicius to silly. He bumps the sides of their hips together. And keeps them there.

This close, Marti has to look slightly down at him. The corner of his mouth turns up unaware at their proximity until he realizes his face is stuck in a smile. So close he can see flecks in Nico’s eyes. This close, he realizes they’re green, or sort of green. A mix of everything, somehow. Green and hazel and is there blue in there? Like a color that doesn’t even exist.

 _(Simulation. Simulation. Simulation._ Marti hasn’t forgotten about it — still holds on to the thought that everything might not be real. In fact, when things seem _too_ perfect to be real — like right now — the doubt roars in his head.)

“What?” Nico asks, like he’s not the one draping himself all over Marti.

Marti just licks the tip of his finger dramatically and starts flipping through the pages of the binder with an animated flick of the wrist, raising his eyebrows at Nico before starting to read. Luckily, this is the binder with all the pasta recipes.

He finds the gnocchi one (with pears — he’s still skeptical about it) he’s looking for, turns on his heel and starts pacing around the kitchen, looking for what he needs. Thankfully, the potatoes are covered in brown paper under some cabinets, still good. And the pears in the fridge have a few brown spots, but they should be fine.

When Marti has everything spread out along the prep table with the recipe open in front of him, thumb on his lip and going over it all to make sure he hasn’t missed anything, Nico slips his hand into his back pocket and pulls Marti’s phone out.

The surprise touch makes Marti feel like he was just electrocuted, heat and shivers through all his skin cells. He actually jumps a little, his face getting hot in the aftermath.

(God, how would he even react if Nico touched him for real? Scratch that, too dangerous of a thought. Marti can’t stand here and daydream about things like this because it’ll lead right into a rabbit hole he hasn’t allowed himself to go down yet.)

“Do you have music on this?” Nico asks, swiping it open comfortably, as if it were his own. 

He starts playing something slow and synthy before Marti even has time to answer him, the volume just loud enough to not be tinny through the small speakers. 

“I’m going to go find the wine,” Nico decides after bouncing his head to it, walking off with a smug smile. Like he knows exactly what he just did, the music being an excuse.

Marti wonders how much they are on the same page sometimes. He fights through a haze of thoughts consisting of Nico and him lingering purposeful touches instead of stealing them like someone might be watching.

The tingles still traveling through him take a minute to shake off, and by the time he’s able to concentrate enough to peel enough potatoes for two plates of gnocchi, Nico has two bottles of Sangiovese tucked under his arms, skipping back into the kitchen with a limp. He bumps their hips together again like a greeting before biting his bottom lip with his full top row of teeth, popping the cork and pouring two glasses while Marti fills a large pot from the sink on the prep table, turning behind him to the stove and lighting it to boil.

“Cheers.” Nico hands him one — the super fancy, wide and thin ones with a long, elegant stem. Red wine swirls in the lower third of it, smelling like flowers and fruits. Marti feels intoxicated before he even takes a sip.

He clinks their glasses together, shyly tipping his head down. “Cheers,” Marti echoes, the smile evident in his voice. They both tap them on the table before raising the rims to their lips for a slow drink.

If you asked Marti two weeks ago where he wanted to see himself in ten years, he’d paint a picture that looks almost just like this one: making dinner for the love of his life while they drink wine and talk about nothing, soft music in the background. He still hasn’t figured out a lot of things about himself — what he’s passionate about, what he wants to do with his life. But, despite the fear he’s harboured about love, it’s the only thing he knows he’s sure of.

A few more sips stains Nico’s lips a little red. A few more makes Marti’s head swim when he’s not concentrating on cooking. Nico pours them both another glass. By the time Marti has kneaded the gnocchi dough, he’s being poured a third.

Marti slices the pears into “thin rivets” according to the recipe. He doesn’t know what that looks like. But he puts them into a pan with butter to “reduce” them — again, a technique that flies over his head. But he pretends to know what he’s doing, if not to impress Nico.

Who’s sitting on the prep table to Marti’s left, cute in his green suit with his red wine, bobbing his head and swishing his hand to to music on Marti’s phone.

He’s distracting. But not in an annoying way. Marti has to be careful not to chop his thumbs off with how many glances he steals at Niccolò, who always happens to be looking back at him with a growing, drunk smile.

God, he wants to kiss him.

He wants to hop up on the counter beside him and grab his face in his hands. Look him in the eyes. Press their lips together and hopefully feel a reciprocal melting. While the wine numbs his brain. While the music plays. While dinner burns, he doesn’t care.

And the thing is, Marti is pretty sure that if he did kiss Nico, Nico would kiss him back. He puts the chance of it well above 50/50.

“Do you need any help?” Nico asks him, half sarcastic. He watches Marti roll the dough into a long cylinder and chop it into even bite-size pieces, topping off their glasses — he keeps doing this, and Marti wonders if he really is on his third.

“From you?” Marti teases, tossing the now cut gnocchi into the boiling water. They’ll only take a minute or two. The sauce — smelling strong of both sweet and sour from pears and gorgonzola — is under the lowest flame of the stove. “Pass. You should be resting anyway. I’m actually just about done,” he notes, putting his tongue between his lips in concentration, turning the stove down and producing two plates and two forks. “Whether it turned out how you remember it tasting though is still up for debate.”

Excited, Nico sets his glass down and claps his hands together once, rubbing his palms against each other.

After draining the pasta, Marti tries to plate it nice while pouring the sauce on top. It looks kind of strange but smells fantastic.

He nods his head to the swinging doors, the two plates in his hand as he hands one to Nico. “Don’t you want to eat in the dining room?” Marti asks.

Instead, Nico just pats the metal of the table beside him. “No, not really anymore,” he decides, seemingly on the spot. “Let’s just sit here.”

Marti hops up on the table to join him, their legs dangling just above the floor. And Nico scoots closer to him with a sharp inhale once he’s settled, the sides of their thighs flushing together. He looks down at his gnocchi — then back up at Marti. His whole body is wobbling with a smile.

“What?” Marti asks, breathing out a laugh. “Aren’t you going to eat it?”

Nico stabs three gnocchi with his fork and shoves them in his mouth, his eyebrows crinkled while he looks at the ceiling and thinks about the flavors. Which must be almost on par, because he closes his eyes, his whole body relaxing, and exhales deep through his nose while he chews.

“You got it pretty close,” Nico notes, two little clinks as he taps his fork on his plate. He stabs three more and holds the bite up to Marti’s face. “Try it,” he eggs, talking through his mouthful with a closed-mouth smile.

 _Cute,_ Marti’s brain hopelessly supplies again. He looks at Nico and wonders if he knows what kind of face he’s making — if he knows his eyes are low and expressive, if he knows his head tilts to the side and his lips are curled into a permanent smile that somehow saturates the rest of him. If he knows he is the personification of a smile, and how rare that is. 

Even with a mouthful of pasta, Marti still wants to kiss him. His skin feels warm and steeped, like the heat permeates all the way through his muscles. And it’s both a physical warmth and a mental warmth — lazy in his bones and in his brain. The wine makes his body feel heavy, his eyes soft, his grin thaw into the rest of him. He looks at the forkful of gnocchi an inch from his mouth, then at Nico who’s smiling through a swallow, waiting for him to take it. He savors both the fondness in his chest and the pang of longing in his heart, wondering if he is strong enough to balance the two without getting quite what he wants forever. If he’s allowed to live in this half-spoiled life.

He takes the bite. And it’s good — probably the best thing he’s ever made. A little sweet and strong. But he mostly focuses on Nico’s face watching him eat it rather than on actually eating it.

“It’s good,” Marti agrees, nodding his head and wiping the corner of his mouth with his thumb.

“Thank you, by the way,” Nico smiles, turning his attention down into his food and stabbing another bite. He exhales clear and content through his nose, swinging his legs that don’t quite touch the floor. Comfortable and satisfied. “This was a good idea,” he praises.

While he says it, he leans over and rests his head on Marti’s shoulder, exhaling deep and pleased.

Marti hopes the sudden stiffness in his upper half goes unnoticed at the touch. Wonders if the heat coming off of him will burn Nico’s ear.

“How are you feeling?” Marti manages to ask. How a single thought that isn’t anything besides this current second is able to pass through his brain, he’s unsure. Hesitantly, like he’s not even in control, he takes his arm closest to Nico and puts it around his back, letting his finger rest on his right ribs. He draws little circles on them with his thumb, indicating he’s talking about the bruised ones on his other side — the side pressed against Marti.

“I could be better, honestly,” Nico responds truthfully, his answer heavy with a million unspoken things. Things besides physical pain.

It goes like this a lot, Marti notices. One sentence builds a bridge into the other side of the comfortable happiness they’ve found with each other to the gnawing suffering they’re both ignoring. And Nico always crosses it before looking both ways.

Marti gets it. The inside of his mouth is bittersweet from the gnocchi. It’s like the taste has spread throughout the rest of him, the air around him too until it hangs heavy through the whole kitchen.

Nico turns his head, looking up at Marti from his shoulder with low, wine-drunk eyes and soft black curls. 

(At least he has Nico. If there were no Nico, everything would just be bitter.)

Marti wants to reach over and brush them out of his face, tuck them behind his ear, rest his hand on his cheek. Kiss him. God, this thought won’t leave him alone. They’re close enough to. Marti’s eyes drop down to Nico’s lips before he realizes what he’s doing — how he must look.

His heart is hammering in his ears. There’s a part of his brain that’s supposed to unconsciously remind him to breathe, but it doesn’t seem to be working. The moment is suspended, every second saturated with the one that’s just passed like time itself is waiting.

Nico blinks at him, slow.

He could, that’s the thing. He could lean in. He could kiss Niccolò if he wanted to. It’s the perfect moment, and with every passing one it seems more unattainable.

But Marti’s both too scared and spoon-fed about the way things exist right now. They could live in this left field all their lives with just a little bit of love and a little bit of doubt. Marti is no stranger to dancing around his emotions — to keeping them inside for what he thinks is the greater good. He’s used to hurt. But not big hurt — he can’t handle it all at once. Instead, he’s built a thick skin from all of the small stabs in passing. Being with Nico but not really _being_ with Nico is a battle he knows he can win. And maybe under normal circumstances he wouldn’t hesitate, the push and pull so palpable he can almost grab it out of thin air — maybe if he met Nico when everything was fine, he’d lean in this time. Because Marti does tend to angle toward impulse when the emotions he’s bottled for so long come spilling out.

But too much is riding on what they have, and he can’t ruin that. He can’t take advantage of Nico — who’s tipsy and, if he feels anything like Marti, lonely. Who he has to wake up to everyday, who he should be thankful for — because at least he has this, right?

Because if Marti had it for a second and then lost it? That might be more painful than this limbo. Not to mention the stupidity and embarrassment he’d feel for being so selfish.

Too many seconds pass, and it becomes clear no one’s making a move. Maybe their trains of thought are the same, spiked with doubt and worries of desire-filled whims. Instead, they just exchange soft, sad smiles so close together the rest of Nico’s face blurs when Marti concentrates on just one part of it.

It’s almost a textbook date. The only thing missing is the kiss at the end.

 

 

 

 

#### ix. no more time

Hold me, heart racing / Take down the sound / That took the kindness and lost it on me / Can someone love me quite the same / That took the kindness and lost it on me / Can someone love me with no more time

###### 

Three(?) glasses of wine, salty pasta, and a trek all around Rome leaves Marti dehydrated enough to wake up with a hangover. 

Alone, with a hangover. 

After wiping the sleep from his eyes, his dry joints creaking, he looks down to the opposite edge of the bed where he should see a sleeping Niccolò. But he’s not there.

Not unusual, though, since Nico’s been in the habit of going for a morning run. Which — you can’t convince Marti to wake up and be energized enough for that on a normal day, but Marti’s thinking Nico might actually be delirious because if he feels anything like Marti does right now, he’d just want to stay in bed.

But now, with the haze of sleep clearing enough to solidify his pounding headache, Marti’s conscious enough to piece together the last forty-eight hours and how impossible that scenario is. Two mornings ago Nico fell off the bike, fragile enough to not even be able to walk at full speed yesterday. There’s no way he’s out for a run.

Marti gets out of bed with half a jolt, half a stumble.

For the first time since a week ago, he starts to panic. Nico’s not in the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room. 

A quick glance around — all of his things are still here. His pajamas lay in a crumpled ball on the floor. His toothbrush is leaning on the counter of the sink. It’s like he vanished without a trace.

The budding terror Marti feels while he moves about the house — desperate and stupid as he opens the fridge, cupboards, the closets (like he’s looking for Nico there, or looking for any sort of clue) — is soft but potent. He can feel it start to push into him so hard it’ll leave a permanent dent if he ever relaxes enough to bounce back. It’s a mixture of that familiar dread he’s thought he’s shaken mixed with an alarming terror. His heart goes from thudding to pounding — he can feel it beat in his mouth. Which is dry, dryer with every passing second.

Nico’s not even in his own room.

Timidly, Marti pushes the French doors to it open, the sun reflecting on the yellow glass panes. It dawns on him that he’s actually never stepped in here before, doesn’t even know what it looks like.

And yet, it doesn’t surprise him. It just drips with Nico. Dozens, if not hundreds of drawings — on scrap paper, on textbook pages, on homework — line the walls of his room, intermixed with various other pieces of art Marti’s unsure if he made himself or not: prints of band posters and mixed media pieces and postcards from around the world. And books. So many books. Marti remembers the first time he met Nico he was reading a book. The sudden, severe pang of hopelessness twists his intestines because it’s probably here somewhere on the shelves, but he’ll never know which one. Plants, too, find little nooks among the stacks of old electronics (did he collect them?), tins of paint brushes (did he paint?) and wooden shelves. (Marti realizes he must have came in here a few times to water them, and his heart seizes at the most mundane.)

There’s still so much they don’t know about each other.

He sits on the edge of Niccolò’s bed, which is neatly made, and runs his hand over the light blue duvet. Traces of him are everywhere. Half finished things on his desk, clothes on the floor, a notebook open and facedown at the spine on his nightstand. A pen next to it.

There is a fear in the deepest neurons of Marti’s brain that pushes its way up in here. Surrounded by Niccolò’s walls in a hug like the room is comforting a widow. In the cold silence that he’s been scared of without Niccolò’s voice to thaw it away.

That Niccolò, like the rest of them, is gone for good with no explanation.

Grief. He hasn’t felt it for a few days. Has been blissfully distracted. But it pounds in time with his hangover headache. In sync with his heart as the panic subsides. And it brings along its friend: guilt.

Marti flops down on his back, his head on Niccolò’s pillow. He doesn’t know what to do. Or to think. Or to feel. He senses it like a hurricane in his chest, the calm eye of it right over his heart, inevitable that it will soon storm over it: he is gone.

He swallows a sob. Not yet. Soon, but not yet. He just wants to lay in Niccolò’s bed for a moment without mulling over every wrong turn. He just wants to remember him while everything is still fresh. Before it all comes undone.

It’s both incredible and miserable how one person can leave such a strong impression in such a short amount of time.

Marti turns his head to the side towards the door, hands laced on his chest. He feels the well of one tear in the corner of his eye, suspended in place before he blinks it back.

Part of him wants to leave everything the way it is. Part of him wants to dissect Nico’s room and learn everything he can — read all his books and listen to all his music and riffle through all his drawers.

Get to know him in the absence. The only way he can now.

That part wins out.

Curious, with shaky hands, Marti picks up the notebook on the nightstand and holds it above his head, flipping to a random middle page.

It’s a dream journal. Dated and sporadic in Nico’s beautifully uneven loopy handwriting. Marti scans it, opening chunks in the beginning, middle, and end. Skimming through it out of order. Sometimes it goes months with nothing written in it, and some nights have multiple entries. As Marti flips through the pages, he realizes it goes back years and years. The first half has the same name on almost every page, woven into the paragraphs of detailed synopsis.

_Maddalena._

And somewhere in the middle — for a brief chunk of time — again on every page:

_Michael._

Back to _Maddalena._

_Maddalena._

_Maddalena._

And then no one.

Nico dreams a lot of being alone. A lot about falling. A lot about his teeth falling out. Too many nightmares.

Marti can barely read them, he’s just scanned through almost all the entries, heart heavy and sinking. He gets to the last one, the pages after it blank. Two nights ago. 

There’s no long, detailed description. It just says _April 19(?):_ (They’ve lost track of the days, most likely) underlined, with one word.

_Marti._

The same night Marti dreamt of him.

His name stares back up at him, just like it did on the chore list hanging on the fridge when Nico first wrote it.

Marti can feel the back of his throat sting, his temples tighten and his chin dip in and constrict to hold it all in so much it almost hurts. He wonders if Nico sometimes still thought this was all a dream.

The same way Marti thinks it might be a simulation.

All of his insides fall when he remembers that possibility. And that if it were true — and how it seems to be growing truer by the second — he’s missed his chance. The perfect moment. Which he felt so powerfully last night to the point time seemed to stop a little extra just for him to make up his mind.

He let it pass. He didn’t act on it. And now Nico is gone and it’s all his fault. He’s failed the simulation and has been left here to rot in the empty shell of it.

And this journal of Niccolò’s with this one final reminder is just a product of it. One last little _fuck you_ keepsake for him to wallow in the could-have-beens. 

He feels like he’s going to throw up.

He _is_ going to throw up.

Marti practically falls off the bed and sprints to the bathroom, hacking bittersweet into the toilet.

Tears, finally, since this whole thing started. The first time this week. He slumps over and leans against the bathtub when his stomach is so empty nothing else comes up, hands in his lap before they make their way up to hold his own face. They build in his chest, stick in his throat, feel tight coming out of his eyes. Bottlenecked. The grief they’ve been paired with pushed down one too many times so now there’s not enough room to comfortably let them all out makes them hurt.

It’s never hurt to cry before. But his whole body hurts.

The compounding realizations that it’s not just Nico who is gone — but his mamma, Gio, Elia, Luca, Eva, everyone — stacks so heavy on top of each other Marti feels like he can’t move beneath it all.

So he lets himself cry in Niccolò’s bathroom. Until the sobs continue but the tears are gone. Until his throat is sticky and disgusting with dry bile. Until his eyes sting to even be open. And then until he’s too exhausted to do even that. He closes them. Until he is utterly empty.

He rubs his face, heavy in his hands as it pulses for some reason, and decides that he’s only going to feel sorry for himself in this bathroom. Once he leaves, he has to pick up the pieces. He needs to find closure. At least for a little while, and then he can break down again. He knows another one is coming, but he can’t paralyze himself during the in-between. Otherwise the guilt will be too much, too unbearable. He can live with the grief, that won’t go away any time soon. But when it’s coupled with the guilt, it’s crippling.

The first thing he does is shower and brush his teeth, trying to physically scrape away the evidence. And then he cleans the bathroom, ridding that too of its sanctuary like feel that might beckon him to wallow again in his own pity.

He moves through it all like a dead man walking.

And then he goes to the list, and he crosses off ~~_grab stuff from home._~~

It’s not as cathartic as when he first wrote it down. He wonders if he crossed it off under any other circumstances, it might be.

Niccolò’s bike is scratched, and the chain fell off, but it’s not broken. Marti puts it back on and rides it to Ostiense, pedaling hard and fast through the streets to feel the burning in his legs. He concentrates on that, because it’s the most neutral pain he’s felt all morning.

He ignores the parked cars. The stop lights switching for their dead motors. He ignores the silence, pretends to weave through pedestrians. Breathes deep just to hear it.

When he makes it to his apartment, walking up the five flights to his door, he hesitates just outside of it, preparing himself for the reminders inside that haven’t moved.

It’s sad to think that his home, just like all of the others, have been sitting here empty. That although he is alive, that although what took place between the walls was once kind of alive, in a lineup now it looks like all the rest.

He pushes the door open. It’s exactly as he left it. No surprise, but he still holds his breath on the first few steps in. There’s a couple things he has to do:

He cleans out the fridge, pinching his nose. He takes out the trash. He does the dishes in the sink. He makes his own bed, and he makes his moms.

And a couple things he has to grab:

His backpack, for one. He decides that he’s only going to carry what he can put in it, nothing more.

His favorite sweatshirt — a dark blue zip up. His keys, not that he needs them, but the one to Gio’s house is on there as well as his own. Connected to a keychain from Berlin he’s held on to for years now. His lighter (well, Elia’s lighter he left here last summer and never remembered to return). His mom’s favorite tea mug, the book by her nightstand he’s sure she never read but maybe he will, and the photo on her dresser of the two of them at the beach when Marti was barely seven years old. His dad took it. 

These barely fill his backpack. Everything else, at a second glance, means nothing. This house was never filled with a lot of happiness.

And Marti didn’t expect to feel complete closure after this, but it starts the stitch of it.

Marti’s not religious. But his mom was. Not in that overbearing, preachy kind of way — she would silently say grace before meals to herself, she had a small crucifix hanging on the wall of her room, and on Sundays — before everything went to shit — she would go to mass by herself. Marti always appreciated that. And he still believes her faith was more of a crutch than anything: something to believe in. Something to hold on to when it felt like there was nothing. He can understand that completely, people will do anything not to be alone.

She kept tea candles for church in the hallway dresser by the front door so she could light them there while she prayed. He takes those too along with the newspaper on the table, the date of it seeming to freeze time to a week ago.

He locks the door behind him. He’s legs feel weak, and he presses his back to it and feels them shake. The weight that he might never come back here again is like a hammer to his knees. It takes a shaky breath in and out to keep them from buckling.

He lets himself cry again — picks himself back up fast.

He has one last thing to do.

He could go anywhere along the Tiber. He could sneak down to the banks of it under the Science Bridge by his house, or to Tiber Island. But he rides Nico’s bike back up north by Castel Sant'Angelo, close to Nico’s place. 

He’ll have to go back at some point. Whether to stay or to grab his other things.

It takes him awhile. The setting sun dips below the narrow buildings that hide the horizon by the time he’s gotten there, walking the bike down the steps on the banks of the Lungotevere under the St. Angelo Bridge. The water is calm today; it flows gentle and high with the flood of spring rainwater.

Marti sits cross-legged on the concrete ledge, watching it float by. And he swings his backpack round front, rifling through it for the tea lights, the newspaper, and his lighter.

He’s never made a paper boat before, but he tries. He doubles up the sheets of newspaper for a thick base, and he folds what might resemble little walls. He does it seven times.

And he lights seven of the tea lights.

One for his mom. One for Gio. Elia. Luca. Eva. And even his dad.

And one for Nico.

He doesn’t really know how to say goodbye. Or if this is a goodbye. Or if this is _too much_ of a goodbye. He just wants to feel like he’s doing _something._ He just wants to continue to stitch up the wound grief has torn into him.

He puts the first little candle into the newspaper boat and watches it float down the river until he can’t see it anymore — its flame on the dark water visible until it bends out of sight.

For his mom.

He cries. This time is not like this morning — sobs so violent he could barely breathe. Instead, the tears collect calmly and run down his cheeks when he blinks. Marti feels the catharsis of it. It’s healing, in a way.

He waits to do the second one, trying to think of good things: when she was happy, when she cooked, when she smiled. Like some sort of mental eulogy. It’s hard to piece those things together without all of the bad stuff in-between, and at the end of it, Marti just wishes he could apologize to her. When he tries to pin down for what exactly, too many things come to mind.

It takes him a long time to float the second candle down, the tears making his nose run when they come on a little stronger. This one’s for Gio. And the next one for Elia. And then Luca. And Eva. His dad. He tries to keep in mind only the good when he watches those tiny flames flicker down with the water. And it’s the good, he thinks, which keeps the tears coming.

Until he gets to the last candle, which by this point is just a pool of melted wax with a dying fire in the thin tea light tin. And with only a week under their belts, the memories of Nico are fresh. 

And they are only good.

His chin and jaw start to clench, his eyes close. He feels a sound in his stomach bubble up, and he gasps it out once before reigning the rest of it in.

He doesn’t know if he has the strength for this one yet.

But maybe it’s good that he doesn’t. Because how morbid would it be for Marti to metaphorically give Niccolò a mental funeral when he turns his head to see him running down the stairs.

 

 

 

 

#### x. back again

I don't want to be long / And it's too hard for you to ride along / So wait for me / And I'll be back again / Let me know if you feel a little lost / A little too real / And I'll come back again / I'll come back again

###### 

It’s the rawest, strangest mixture of relief and anger when Marti spots him — just a curly little black dot on top of limbs jogging down the concrete steps to the banks of the Tiber. It twists his insides and pinches all of his nerves until he’s convinced he’s paralyzed.

He doesn’t know how to balance it — or what feeling to let win if any should. Part of him wants to run to Nico, grab him and never let go just to make sure he’s real. And here. And staying. Not some sort of figment of Marti’s imagination. But another part of him wants to scream, to keep crying, to turn away. Mostly in fear that he’s hallucinating.

“A warning would have been nice,” Marti starts when Nico approaches him, still sitting by the water’s edge. And he wants it to sound a little cold but he can’t make himself. It comes out soft and genuine because really: it would have been.

He starts to feel silly. The fifteen minutes he spent scurrying around Nico’s house this morning plus the additional fifteen crying in his bathroom before darting off in a panic and deciding this was all the end feels like a lifetime ago. So much time in between where he could have been calm and waited and avoided this. And instead of giving Nico — or himself — the benefit of the doubt, for once he let his feelings dictate his actions. And he read it all wrong. He wipes at his eyes, feeling foolish.

But it doesn’t help, the tears still spill from the corners of his eyes down his nose, and it’s useless to try and hide the fact.

Nico sits beside him, and without warning wraps his arms sideways around Marti’s middle, leaning his forehead on his shoulder.

Marti wants to shrug him off but he can’t. They’ve never been this close to each other, and for a moment Marti pretends Nico is his. Rather, he gives into it, crooking his neck to rest his temple in the soft curls on the top of Nico’s head. Tears run into them. Marti breathes in, unable to combat the shake in it.

Nico smells good. Like home.

“I just needed to be alone for a minute,” Nico whispers. It comes out in a tone Marti can’t quite decipher: apologetic and broken and pitied and self-loathing all at once.

“You could have told me,” Marti sniffs, then exhales deep. He closes his eyes and roots himself in place, trying to feel strong so Nico won’t let go of him. “Or left me a note. All of your stuff was still here. I thought—”

“I wasn’t thinking,” Nico mumbles, interrupting him, and he sounds a little angry. 

Marti thinks maybe at himself — and that hurts. Imagining Nico feeling anything like he does right now threatens to rip the seams of any closure he’s found today. 

“I’ll explain everything later,” Nico sighs. His breathing quivers, and Marti feels something wet on his shoulder.

They stay like that for awhile. And Marti lets himself be held. By now, the tears on his face have dried, but another thought makes a few more well up: he wants to look Niccolò in the eyes, but he’s too afraid to move — scared that he might never be this close to him again.

But maybe he will. He feels like there’s a tangled up, complicated lesson somewhere buried in all this.

“Hey,” Marti lifts his head off of Nico’s, turning to face him and tilting his chin up. Nico’s eyes are ringed pink, and his cheeks are wet. Instinctively, Marti reaches forward to wipe away a tear. “Don’t cry,” he comforts.

Surprisingly, that makes Nico laugh. He sniffles through it, arms still around Marti. “Says the guy who’s crying,” he teases.

Marti’s thumb rubs circles on Nico’s temple, and he tucks a curl behind his ear. All of this grief seems like a push over a thin red line that seperated their previous touches from friendly to intimate. 

This is not something Marti would have done with Gio. This is something new altogether, and with his hand on Nico’s face, lingering there, his heart kickstarts again. It aches and sings and throbs.

But he likes it. He likes this feeling; he likes to see Nico smile. “Well, at least I’m not an ugly crier,” he settles for, making light of it all. He turns his lips into a smile frown, eyebrows raised. Tone of voice despite the tears confident and playful.

“Oh, fuck you,” Nico laughs, and he softly pushes on Marti’s middle before bringing him in tight again. Back to head resting on shoulder, temple on top of head.

It’s been like this so many times between them, when Marti feels like this is enough. That whatever he has with Nico, it will always be enough because it’s more than and better than anything he asked for. But at the same time, the compounding truth that Marti can’t lean over and kiss Nico like he wants feels heavier and heavier.

“How did you know where I was?” Marti asks, realizing.

Nico slips one hand away from Marti, reaching for the last lit tea candle in front of him, the pool of wax in the tin almost evaporated. The flame is just a little orange ball on the wick.

“I saw this in the river,” Nico shrugs, and he blows it out. Somehow, that seems the most fitting. “So I followed it upstream.”

He doesn’t question what they were for. Marti thinks he probably already has an idea.

“I’m sorry,” Marti whispers.

He feels a little snort on his shoulder.

“For what?” Nico asks.

“I’m really not sure,” Marti laughs with him. “All of this, I guess.”

The fact that Nico is here suppresses some of the foolishness he feels. The fact that he is _real_ — that Marti isn’t being punished in the empty ruins of a simulation. That what he feels is his, and it’s tangible. That he’s not a piece of code on someone’s computer left to run its course until the grid goes black or the sun blows up.

Nico squeezes him, his hands on Marti’s sides. It makes his face get hot, and he doesn’t want it to stop. Marti wants Nico to hold him, to touch him — everywhere. All the time.

“No,” Nico starts, swallowing. “I’m sorry.” He sounds serious.

Marti turns to him. “I just need you to do one thing,” he thinks, holding up his pinky. His mouth squishes into something resembling a smirk.

Smiling — that kind that sparkles all the way into his watery eyes — Nico nods up at Marti with a wobbly grin. And he links his pinky with Marti’s like he knows the drill. Like he’s thankful and impressed he’s remembered.

“You just have to promise me you won’t leave.”

There’s a little dip to Nico’s face, but it smooths out with understanding. He kisses the pad of his own thumb. “I promise.”

Marti kisses his own thumb too, and with linked pinkies, presses them together in what feels like a vow.

 

 

 

 

#### xi. heart

We've got the heart / It's true / Don't wanna waste love / Don't wanna hurt you / Hurt you / Lifting off deeper blues / We're gonna pull through / We're gonna let heart hold true

###### 

It feels like a second chance.

Despite the proof Marti’s been shown that he is — that Nico is, that this all is — very real, there’s a corner of his brain that won’t stop thrumming:

_Simulation. Simulation. Simulation._

He thought he was rid of it. It’s a whisper so quiet he only hears it in the silence he hates. And he’s afraid that eventually it’ll drive him mad until he does the only thing he knows will stop it for sure.

Because he has to know. He thought he could win the slow game. He thought he could live half-spoiled. He thought he could suppress not only grief, but love too. He thought. And he was wrong.

The moon — not full, but bright — glows through the window. Marti can’t sleep.

Nico, at the other end of the bed, snores quietly by his feet.

It seems wrong, somehow. All wrong. To go back to this after all that. Not like it was for nothing, just the opposite — like it _was_ for something and they’re just not grabbing at it.

He has to squash the doubt once and for all. And it’s a shrinking doubt — one so small that Marti gives himself the benefit of it. But doubt is doubt, and the thinnest threads of it are what tie people into ruts, are what keep them from courage. Doubt, no matter how small, is potent.

Marti turns around, shuffling over the sheets until his head rests at the foot of the bed with Nico’s. No longer opposite.

The whole pressure of the mattress is different like this — it pushes at Marti’s body in another way. Or maybe he’s just starting to feel all his hot spots prickle. That tends to happen when he’s close to Nico.

Who must be awake, judging by his face. He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even open his eyes. He just smiles. Something between the lines of smug and tired. “Hi,” he says, eyes still closed. It comes out thick and tired and pleased.

“Hi,” Marti echoes back, slow but determined. “I have a question to ask you,” he manages after a pause.

“Okay,” Nico drags out in a sleepy laugh. “What?” He opens his eyes now, lids still low and pupils condensing thanks to the moon. He bends his knee and slots his ankle between Marti’s calves.

Marti feels it drag on all the tiny hairs, like every follicle is a pit of fire.

The doubt shrinks in the heat. So small he has to root around to find it.

Marti swallows. “Do you ever still think this is all a dream?”

It’s a dumb question. But Marti can’t help but think of his dream journal, of his reality checks. Of his own hesitations to fully give in to the fact they may just be the last two people on earth — and how dangerous latching on to dreams or simulations or alternate universes or heaven or hell or whatever other possibility might exist could be if they hold on too long. Instead of accepting it for what it is.

Humming low, Nico rolls his head back so he’s looking up at the ceiling. The sound neither confirms nor denies Marti’s question, like maybe he doesn’t have an answer yet.

“You know why I do these reality checks?” Nico deflects, talking through it. There’s something in his voice that sounds like disappointment, or resent. Like every word he just said took all the effort he has. “Like when I asked if you could read that book?”

Marti shakes his head, scooting closer in the middle of it, his nose just a scrunch away from brushing Niccolò’s cheek. The proximity — the warmth — makes his eyes get heavy despite his restlessness. He’s restrained himself every time he’s felt the want to reach out and touch Nico to comfort him — and he realizes that’s selfish. He needs Nico — in whatever form he can get him in — and Nico needs him too. Marti is just trying to learn how, in what way, what lines there might or might not be. He moves his hand and traces his fingers feather-light up Niccolò’s ribs, up to his shoulder and down his bicep, resting it on the soft side of his forearm. Letting Nico know he’s here while he forms the words, while he thinks. Marti’s eyes follow his own hand up and down, avoiding Nico’s face; he’s nervous. He can feel his skin prickle, like he might start to actually shiver with the soft edge he feels between them.

Nico motions his leg so his calf rests between Marti’s knees, veering up to the fleshy parts of his thighs. Slowly, masking the movements in deep breaths and shifts to get comfy, like it’s an accident. They touch each other like they’re not allowed to. Like they’re making room for the doubt to get comfy too.

“I have this thing,” Niccolò swallows, “and it’s why I needed a minute alone yesterday. And it’s why I didn’t think to tell you I left.” His voice is low, his words blur together like he’s thought too long about how exactly to say this. Or like he’s given this speech before.

“What thing?”

Marti rubs small circles with his pinky on Nico’s arm, around his wrist, on the fat part of his palm below his thumb. He wants to do so much more — he wants to hold Nico, to hold his hand or push him into the warm part of his neck.

“It’s a personality disorder,” Nico says at the ceiling, like he’s ashamed — like he can’t look at Marti. “Borderline Personality Disorder. It makes me sort of impulsive. Some might say clingy. And alone in my head, like the world isn’t real. And sometimes it can get really bad. The people who know me — I know what they think. They think I’m crazy. Sometimes it makes me want to die.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Marti whispers. And he means it. Nico’s maybe a little unusual, but Marti knows with or without whatever makes people think Nico is crazy, he’d always be this strange sort of charming. It’s one of the things Marti likes best about him.

“And I’ve been scared to tell you,” Nico inhales, closing his eyes and tilting his head back down, his cheek on the mattress mirroring Marti’s so they’re face to face. “Because I don’t want you to leave. Sometimes I think that’s why this all happened. Because I’m awful, and it’s bound to happen. Everyone is bound to leave me because I’m impossible to deal with.”

So Marti is not alone in his guilt, and hearing it second hand makes him realize how absurd it is. To think that Nico has felt this way — god, it makes his heart ache. But they’ve been harboring it alone, and that’s not fair.

Marti drags his hand down, his fingers skimming over the warm, worn part of Nico’s palm. He links their pinkies together.

“I’ve already promised you I won’t,” he reminds him with something that sounds like a smile. “Or,” he thinks. “You’ve promised me _you_ won’t, this is me promising you _I_ won’t. It works both ways. We are a package deal.” He says it like it’s obvious, and he’s surprised at how effortless that promise escapes him. But the alternative is something he wouldn’t even be able to wrap his head around — this life without Nico. That’s not an option.

The softest smile finds its way onto Nico’s face, the kind that starts somewhere in the middle before it makes a path into every odd wrinkle of his forehead, his cheeks, his chin. He opens his eyes finally, a little wet and blurry — something overwhelmed and grateful sparkles in them when his lips curl up, that crease Marti loves right above the corners of them.

“So,” Nico begins again with a laugh — shaking his head at their little emotionally overwhelming conversational detour, “to answer your question: sometimes, yeah, I still think this is a dream. And sometimes I hope it is. Which is why there’s one last reality check I haven’t done, just in case.”

“What’s that?” Marti asks, genuine.

They were close. The kind of close that could have been brushed off with sleepy pillow talk — the kind that can be forgotten about because the middle of the night tends to have this magic that lets things only be real if you want them to be. Be forgotten if you want them to be, brushed off with the excuse of a dream.

He doesn’t know who initiated the movement, but then they’re even closer. Marti can feel the breath of Nico’s nose on his cheek, he can only focus on part of his face because the rest gets fuzzy in his peripherals. He can sense the air shift between their lips when Nico smiles, like a magnetic field. Nico tilts his head —

— and Martino feels the same tilt in all his insides. In his brain.

“You know how in your dreams, you always wake up right before the best part?” Nico whispers, throwing the bait — his lips thin in a smile — so thin that if he wasn’t smiling maybe they’d be touching Martino’s.

Martino bites. “Okay,” he says, and it comes out shaky but bright on the exhale, held in a beat too long. Nico is talking about this moment right now — the best part a centimeter away. “Have you woken up yet?” He teases.

Nico giggles, and Marti’s too dizzy to notice if the top tips of their lips bumped together or if he’s just delusional. 

“No,” Nico mouths, barely audible.

Marti realizes it has to be him — he has to close the distance to prove both of their theories wrong. He has to kiss Niccolò to live his truth. He has to kiss Niccolò to make the best part happen.

He barely has to lean in. So with a sigh that pushes him forward, Marti presses their lips together softly, closing the gap that doubt created. 

The rest of them, too, finds a way to press together. Like arms and legs and chests were somehow suspended and now are somehow relieved. Nico’s leg slips farther up, thigh between thigh. Their stomachs lay flat against one another, their chests. Marti’s hand — still pinky and pinky with Nico’s — finds the rest of his fingers and laces them all together, squeezing hard and resting their clasped hands on Nico’s hip.

Marti barely registers what’s going on — that he’s being kissed back — until Nico’s other hand comes up to rest on his face as he leans up, a little over Marti. No one has ever touched him like this, so sweet. He can feel Nico smile against his lips the moment it happens, and his heart is hammering in his ears, in his mouth, in his stomach. He wonders if Nico can feel it everywhere against him: the soft pulse of Marti.

And nothing is reset. No one wakes up. The best part happens, and it keeps happening.

Marti feel _so real_ right now — he feels real in his body and real in his brain. He feels real in his heart. 

Their lips open lazy and slow, the tips of their tongues bump into each other uncertain and nervous. The kiss is full bodied — Marti concentrates just as much on their legs slotting and on their stomachs pushing in and out against each other in deep breaths and on their laced fingers as on their lips meeting. 

Like every part of them is kissing — their ankles, their fingertips. Every freckle and every hair. Their hips are kissing. Their chests are kissing. All of Marti is kissing all of Nico right now. 

Nico untwines their hands and moves his grip to Marti’s back, pushing him closer, holding him. And without a second thought, Marti reaches up to slide his free fingers through the curls on the back of Nico’s head. They are so soft, softer than Marti ever imagined. He takes his time to touch Nico’s neck, his temple — feeling his jaw open and close in his palm while they kiss. Marti lets everything about him melt, he lets himself be held, he lets himself kiss Niccolò: gently, tenderly, in an easy back and forth. Nico likes to brush his bottom lip on Marti’s top one. He likes to stop for a second and turn his head the other way every once in awhile, like he wants to kiss Marti from every angle.

Tentatively, their tongues meet fully — the flat part of Nico’s in Marti’s mouth. He feels his whole body rise a degree with the heat of it, going back and forth until Marti is burning alive. Their lips slide against each other, on the corners of their mouths, taking side trips to chins and cheeks before coming back together. If slow could ever be urgent, that’s what this kiss is. They move in little rhythms, but always pushing closer. Their hands grab, their arms press. Marti likes when Nico moves him, when he beckons him inward with little guidances. He likes being touched and held and kissed. 

It really is the best part. 

“How about now?” Marti asks against Nico’s lips when he’s found room to think again, teasing.

Nico laughs into his mouth. The vibrations, the heat, Marti feels it all over, his whole body a hot spot.

Nico hums, his smile pressed to Marti’s smile. “No.”

 

 

 

 

#### xii. warm blood

And you're fire, but sweet / Hot coals beneath my feet / Warm blood, body / And I lost it when you found me / You're whispers and sunlight / Cold hands feeling for mine / Warm love, softly, never letting / Never letting love go

###### 

When the headrush subsides, Marti feels all that energy drain down.

He’s kissed people. Girls. First as an experiment and then mostly for performance. But he’s never kissed anybody for this long.

And he’s been horny, sure, but it’s always been deliberate or planned and definitely one sided. There’s getting off —

— and then there’s this.

Kissing someone he likes. Being close to someone he likes. He doesn’t know what’s more turned on: his head or his heart.

Nico’s thumb trails on the thin skin right behind his ear, under the lobe, pressing. The rest of his fingers hold his face, dance over the curves of his tragus and the line of his jaw. His other hand, pressed to Marti’s back, finds its way under his shirt, warm skin on his spine.

Marti can feel all the blood in his body rise a degree with every beat of his heart. Pulsing in hot flashes.

They still kiss slowly — but more open, and harder. It doesn’t change, it just evolves. They turn their heads, they smile with it, they part their lips for a long time to let their tongues dance before closing their mouths to do it again. Back and forth with wandering hands until Marti feels almost breathless, like he is drowning in the heat.

Yeah, he has never kissed anybody like this. Like he wants to.

He feels brave enough to reciprocate the skin on skin — the hand curled in the back of Nico’s hair running down his neck, down his shoulder, very softly over his bruised ribs and stopping at his hip, bunching up the fabric of his shirt to brush his fingers there.

Which maybe was a mistake, because Nico feels so nice. Marti didn’t know what to expect, really, but the intimate parts of Nico’s skin under his touch make all of the hot spots on him flare. Marti’s hand wanders from his hip over to the middle of his stomach, sandwiched between the both of them. There are little dips where his muscles begin and end, and he can feel it push out and pull in with deep breaths. Nico’s skin is warm, and smooth — Marti drags his fingers down to the softer part of his stomach beneath his belly button, little hairs below it. He didn’t think this would make him so light-headed, but it does.

He’s coming down from the initial high of the kiss enough for his brain to start wandering somewhere else. So he scoots his hips back because he’s starting to get hard.

But Nico just follows him, using the leg between Marti’s to push them open and roll him over to his back.

Like with the head tilt — the reciprocal one in Marti’s insides — all of his organs rolls with it, his brain too. Dizzy for a moment with a deep breath in.

Nico’s on top of him and it’s useless to hide anything. Something like more than a sigh escapes Marti on the exhale into Nico’s mouth. His ears ring. His blood boils.

Nico lays down into Marti’s open legs and he has to turn his head to the side because he needs to _breathe._

Nico takes it as an open invitation to kiss his neck. Slowly, right in the middle of it and trailing over the part of his jaw that meets his ear. Back down with a little tongue, hand up to pull the collar of Marti’s t-shirt down so he can kiss his collarbones.

Marti can feel Nico smile through all of it, the shape of it everywhere on him. It grows wider when his hips buckle up to meet Nico’s. Like his body and his brain are two totally different entities tied together with his heart.

He can hardly believe this wonderful thing is happening to him in the limbo of the likely beginnings of armageddon. That a boy — _Niccolò_ — is kissing the underside of his chin, has his hand on his chest up his shirt, wants to be with him.

“How about now?” Marti teases, keeping the joke going when he’s caught his breath.

Nico, kisses dragging up Marti’s cheek, giggles warmly into his skin. His hand on Marti’s middle roams down the length of his arm to find Marti’s hand and link their fingers together. He presses his hips down, his whole body — all his weight — on top of Marti, heavy between his legs and on his chest.

Marti feels Nico hard against the soft part of where his pelvis meets his thigh, any trace of blood left in his brain bleeding down at the pressure of it.

“No,” Nico laughs before capturing Marti’s lips in another open-mouthed kiss, sighing into it. He rocks forward; Marti’s insides swell, the heartbeat of his lower half making everything ultra tender every other second.

His closed eyes roll back, spots on the underside of his lids. Their tongues meet at the same time Nico moves on top of him, the same time Marti arches up. He squeezes their clasped hands, no intentions to let go.

Of Nico. Ever.

“Can I go down on you?”

The words, practically moaned right into Marti’s mouth, send a shock all the way down to his toes. They curl, and Marti feels a tightness start to stiffen inside of him he can’t wait to unknot.

He swallows dryly, nods numbly. Is surprisingly not nervous.

Or maybe not so surprisingly. Everything about Nico has always been comfort to him.

“Yeah?” Nico asks, looking for a verbal confirmation.

Marti nods again, their lips still together — bottom one dragging on top one and then reverse. “Yes,” he works out, the word low and thick and more of a feeling than a sound; he can barely hear over the thumping of his head and the hissing in his ears. 

Nico kisses him again — closed-mouth, lingering, something deep and unsaid in it.

Shirt rumpled up, pecks down his stomach, boxers clumsily removed when Marti lifts his hips and Nico slides them down. That part goes achingly slow, every kiss from Niccolò like a little burn. But somewhere in the middle of it, their hands come together again, fingers between fingers squeezing tight by Marti’s hip on the sheets — him reaching down, Nico reaching up.

And Marti’s thighs shake when Nico’s head gets between his legs, slow soft kisses to the insides of them.

“I’ve never done this before,” Nico notes, like a warning. But he says it with a half-smile, like he’s not nervous either.

“Same,” Marti manages, a breathy laugh as he bends his neck back to look at the ceiling, head spinning. 

He cranes back up — resting on his elbows — to see Niccolò smiling at him, lips red and shiny wet parting over his teeth, his tongue between them in something devilishly cute. He looks down — maybe a little shy, or maybe just enamoured — and then up again. Marti’s smiling back at him, unable to help it.

He watches when Nico takes him into his mouth, holding his hip down with one hand, clutching their clasped ones with the other. Watches the slide of his lips, the twirl of his tongue. Has no idea if he’s “good” or not but who cares — Marti feels a potion of want and affection and devotion and pleasure concoct itself in his tight stomach, making it tighter.

Marti tangles his free hand in Nico’s curls — the soft loose ones by his forehead, combing down to the ones at the back of his neck. Everything south of his chest is fluttering in uneven beats and searing patches of skin after a minute of steady pressure and wetness and heat — Nico’s mouth on him slow but constant.

He didn’t know he could feel like this.

At some point Nico’s hand leaves his hip and disappears from his body completely. Marti wonders where it went — maybe to touch himself.

That theory might be confirmed when he feels the vibrations of Nico’s lips in little moans.

It all happens so fast — the culmination of this intense feeling, of his nerves so tender and sensitive, of Nico feeling good — Marti untangles his grip from Nico’s hair and gently pushes his head back in warning; reaching down to finish himself, the wet slide of his hand from Nico’s mouth. Everything tight about him starts to unravel — he feels his stomach pool.

He comes hard, certain areas of his body like water on hot coals — the deep part on the center on his low back, the tops of his thighs, the base of his neck, behind his eyes. Sizzling out.

Nico kisses his thighs when it happens, so touching and gooey it’s almost unbearable. His lips are slow and smiley over Marti’s skin, pressing up his leg to his hip, his hip to his stomach — eventually catching Marti’s mouth in another mushy peck as he starts to come down. It makes Marti smile — he doesn’t know if he’s ever smiled during an orgasm. 

When they break away, Nico tips Marti’s chin up with a finger to look at him, the curls of their hair tangling with touching foreheads. And they do just that for a moment: look at each other. Marti’s insides settle, go gentle, swell. His heart expands until it travels up his throat, down into his stomach. Big everywhere in his chest with the beginnings of love. Their hands are still together, Marti feels their sweaty palms and twitchy fingers.

They unclasp them so Marti can take his dirty shirt off, so Nico can get up and wash his hands. An indiscernible amount of time passes for Marti — breathless on his back in bed — before the gentle pressure of Nico comes back to lay beside him, leg over Marti’s hip, rolling to the side with his head in the crook of his neck. He feels it more than he sees it when his eyes open, adjusting to the dark.

Marti can feel Nico smile into his skin when he settles, and he turns to kiss the top of Nico’s head. Because the doubt doesn’t get a comfy place to nest between them. Because Marti feels free to do so. Because Marti feels free.

They lie there — catching their breath, coming down, brains catching up. Marti pulls the duvet somewhere balled up by their feet up over them, arm around Nico’s shoulders. 

He wonders if he should say something, if they should just go to sleep. He wonders how Nico is feeling, what’s going on inside his head — if this was all too much or not enough. If he should hold him tighter, if he should kiss him again as if to seal everything up with a nice little bow.

“Do you think we would have ever been laying like this right now if none of this happened?” Nico whispers it into his neck, the arm around Marti’s middle draped over his ribs, finger wandering in aimless shapes over them. It’s difficult to read his voice: curious, for sure. But Marti has a hard time detecting anything else.

“Like would we have met each other?” He wonders, turning his head down to ask the question in Nico’s hair.

“Yeah,” Nico swallows. “Or, more like, would you have liked me.”

Marti’s heart clenches. He wishes Nico knew how amazing he is — how amazing he makes Marti feel.

“Hey,” Marti starts, rolling to his side to face Nico. “Look at me,” he says softly, scooting down so Nico doesn’t really have a choice.

He doesn’t look sad. Not in that visible, outside way. But maybe — and Marti doesn’t know how he’s always missed it — in that inside way. The deep kind of sadness that some people carry around with them since before they can really remember when. The kind they might always carry.

But it doesn’t mean Marti can’t help him carry it. Even just a handful.

(It’s not like he’s a stranger to it, either.)

Nico does look at him, and the genuine smile tightening his cheeks reaches his eyes. Marti can feel his own soften, and he reaches over to caress Nico’s cheek with his thumb.

“Listen,” Marti whispers, licking his bottom lip to keep from smiling too wide. “I think you’re fun,” he lists. “And cute — I thought that the first time I saw you —”

Nico giggles, pursed lips in that little disbelieving smile.

“And you’re kind of weird, but like, also hot?”

“Stop,” Nico drags out, tipping his head back with rolled eyes and a growing smile.

“And I like you now.” There’s a little pause after Marti says it, his smile disappearing in a serious, genuine way. Like it absorbed into him — he feels it in his chest. “I think I would have liked you even if I had other options.” He means it.

Nico looks down. “I think if you were inside my brain for even one second, you would be scared of me.”

“I don’t think so,” Marti says quickly, eyebrows drawing together.

“No?” Nico has a hard time meeting his eyes again. He searches Marti’s face — wide pupils over the bridge of his nose, up his cheeks.

Marti exhales deep, brushing the curls on Nico’s forehead out of his face. He’s used to living inside his own head — has been doing so for years and years. To the point he would isolate himself, tuck away pieces of himself inside his brain.

He thinks again of how that made him the worst version of himself: fake and rude. How he thought he was better than his mom — who would rather physically isolate herself. When really their pain was written on the same page, from the same ink.

How he sometimes said he hated her for it. But it’s what he hated about himself.

He takes a minute — closes his eyes and presses his forehead against Nico’s — to mourn the fact he’ll never get to make things right. Not with her, at least.

“Everything you feel is real,” Marti says softly, slowly. “I’m sure I’ve felt something similar at some point, too.”

“Maybe not in the same way.”

No, maybe not. But maybe that doesn’t matter.

“But it’s not like you’re some sort of… alien or something,” Marti giggles, his goal always to make Nico smile when conversations turn down a rainy road. “I’m sure you’re not alone in your thoughts. And if you are, I’m right here to make sure you don’t have to be.”

Marti feels Nico exhale shaky on his cheek, a bump on his nose from Nico’s.

He kisses him, warm lips soft and swollen from before. Marti still feels fragile everywhere, his blood continuing to find a balanced rhythm in his body as it evens out.

“Why are you asking?” Marti asks over it, feeling the shape of Nico’s smile against his lips. “Are you disappointed you're stuck with me?”

Nico just shrugs his shoulders, his smile now on Marti’s cheek as he laughs into it.

Fake offended, Marti pushes Nico back by the chest with jaw dropped, eyes wide.

And Nico just pulls him back in strong.

“No,” he says. “I already don’t want to let you go.”

Marti lets himself be tucked in close, arms coming around to circle Nico. Foreheads back together while Nico relaxes his hold to cup Marti’s face, lovingly drag his thumbs down his cheeks.

“You don’t have to,” Marti whispers.

 

 

 

 

#### xiii. get behind this

I watched the fire burn down / I saw the smoke carry it away / But all this joy out of the ashes / I would have held on, but I got distracted / I guess I never thought / Anything good could come from the dead and gone

###### 

“Coffee?”

Marti feels Nico ask it with a kiss to his cheek when he starts to stir in the beginnings of waking up — restless legs, quiet yawns, tired eyes opening to a blurry Nico under him. They always wake up like this somehow, with Marti on top of Nico — like Nico subconsciously rolls them both over like this in his sleep. It’s nice, although the first time it happened Marti was convinced he’d crushed him.

The mornings are warm now — there’s hot sunshine through the window pane streaking over half the bed, covering their faces in bright light. It takes a minute for Marti’s eyes to adjust, but when they do, a smiling Niccolò is tracing his eyes all around Marti’s face, dragging the hand on his side up to hold his neck with fingers brushing his jaw.

Marti thought waking up the day after they had kissed might’ve felt like waking up from a dream. Like none of it really happened.

But it didn’t. And it didn’t the next day. Or the day after that. Or the week after that.

“Coffee,” Marti agrees in a deep, sleepy voice.

Nico presses their lips softly and quickly together before rolling out of bed, taking a minute to move a thumb over Marti’s forehead and brush away the hair in his face. Marti preens into it, closing his eyes again but with no intentions to go back to sleep.

When the initial bliss of about two days in bed with Nico after that night began to wear off, Marti won’t lie — some familiar dread found its way into the corners of his brain, deep-seeded in the neurons accustomed to it. It would ask him things like _what if you fight? What if something bad happens? What if you fall out of love?_

And suddenly, Nico’s question about if they’d ever be together under different circumstances didn’t feel like a far off fear.

But then Marti remembered that circumstance is everything, that comparing is meaningless. He doesn’t know why any of this happened — neither does Nico. He has no idea why everyone is gone; _if_ everyone is gone or if they’ll ever come back; why he, of all people, is still here — why _Nico_ is still here. It doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t have to, really, when they’ll never know. 

The chances they could die tomorrow feel overwhelmingly in death’s favor.

So letting dread ask those questions is all for nothing, just time wasted. Marti has always been good at enjoying what he has, and this is no exception. He just hopes that if that same dread starts asking Nico those same questions, maybe living day by day is a comforting thought to him like it is to Marti.

They’ll have that conversation eventually.

Marti can smell the espresso from the kitchen — warm and rich. So he gets up to meet Nico in there, shirtless with his boxers. The dishes from dinner last night remain undone in the sink, the bottle of wine they drank empty on the counter with red-stained glasses next to it. But it doesn’t bother Marti, they’ll get to it later. The mess just makes everything seem like home, especially when Nico stands at the stove next to it all humming in his underwear and a long tank top that makes it look like he isn’t even wearing any with a spoon in his mouth.

“Oh good,” he says, turning around when he spots Marti with a mug in each hand. “I made you a cappuccino.”

Marti takes a seat at the kitchen table, and Nico sets it down in front of him. He eyes Nico suspiciously, but that doesn’t stop Nico from sitting in his lap sideways, sipping his own. His eyes are wide and innocent and playful over the rim of his mug like he knows exactly what Marti is about to ask him.

“Where did you get the cream?” Marti starts, eyebrows coming together on his forehead and he stares into the hazel-colored foam around the edges, doubtful. Nico had tried to make some sort of design with it on top — maybe a leaf — but it’s melted into a strange sort of swirl.

“I froze the carton we got,” Nico says proudly, both hands clasped around his cup with a wobbly head and pursed smile. “Since you never told me if you wanted one or not.”

“Can you do that?” Marti asks, still leery but starting to smile in a confused sort of way. “Can you freeze cream?”

“Why wouldn’t you be able to?” Nico’s face starts to fall, worried in a way but with an odd chuckle.

“I don’t know!” Marti defends, gesturing to the cappuccino going cold in his hand and inspecting it, taking a fingerful of the foam on top and tasting it apprehensively. “I just didn’t know you could do that and have it still be good.”

“It tastes fine, right?” Nico asks with a double meaning, taking another sip like he’s also asking himself. A remnant of foam leaves itself on his upper lip. “I’m almost done with mine…” he trails.

Marti, still cautious but ready to humor him, takes his first drink. “If I get sick, this is on you,” he warns, wagging one finger and smiling after he swallows. “Also you got something —” he points vaguely at Nico’s mouth.

Nico licks the corner of his lips but only gets about half of it.

Marti just rolls his eyes. “Here,” he huffs, reaching up to brush the rest of it away with his thumb, unsuccessful when Nico just leans in to kiss him.

He tastes like cappuccino — sugar and velvety, rich espresso. Marti feels him smile into it, part his lips, lick into his mouth.

Marti’s happy to say that this is not a rare occurrence: random make-out sessions in the middle of wherever. Yesterday, they kissed hot and heavy on the Ponte Vittorio over the Tiber — St. Peter’s in full view, usually full of people. Kind of like a little _fuck you._ It felt nice, actually, to have no one around.

He hears the thud of Nico’s empty mug being set on the table beside him so his hand can come up and cradle Marti’s face. And then it gets a mind of its own when Nico must realize Marti is actually half naked, trailing down his neck and chest, settling on his stomach, over to his hip where he squeezes gently.

It makes Marti smile so wide he can barely kiss Niccolò back.

“So are we going to do something today?” Nico breaks away, eyebrows raised. He bounces on Marti’s knee excitedly.

“We do stuff every day,” Marti defends, scoffing. He takes another taste of his cappuccino, drinking it slowly in the hopes it will soon be too cold to finish.

Nico, eyebrows raised so high they disappear into the mop of bed-head curls on his forehead, wiggles his head with pursed lips and cranes his neck back to point at the refrigerator.

Where the list sits, almost all of the chores still unchecked.

Marti sighs, only slightly annoyed. His default emotion when he’s around Nico always seems to rest around half content. “Okay,” he drags out, giving up on his drink and setting it quarter-finished on the table beside Nico’s. “What do you want to do?”

Nico’s pursed smile turns a little wicked, one eyebrow coming back down so one stays raised.

“Uh-oh,” Marti breathes, teasing.

“Uh-oh?” Nico echoes back, confused but going along with it.

Marti shrugs. “You have that face.”

“What face?”

“That _let’s get into trouble_ face,” Marti cocks his head, obvious.

Nico rolls his eyes, and his hands leave Marti to gesture around vaguely. “Who, Marti? Who is here to get us into trouble?” Nico grabs his middle again, shaking his sturdiness away before ticking his ribs.

“Stop!” Marti giggles, playfully swatting his hand. “Fine. What do you want. Let’s go get into trouble.”

“We’re actually going to go do something very responsible,” Nico informs, chin tipping up all pleased. “You’ll probably love it, really. It’s got rules and laws and it’s nice and boring —”

Marti just sofly pushes Nico’s face away with an exasperated but still fond sigh — nose in his palm — interrupting him while Nico continues mumbling into his hand.

“Just tell me what we’re doing.”

Nico smiles with his teeth, big and bright. Tongue bitten between them. “First day of driver’s ed,” he announces, shimmying his head back and forth. “We can’t do half of this other stuff before we move the cars,” he gestures over to the list. “So you have to learn how to help me.”

It’s true, the city center is filled with a forever frozen rush hour, blocking the streets and making it impossible to get from one end to the other quickly and easily.

“Fine,” Marti smiles, acting annoyed when really that’s the farthest thing from the truth. “But you better be a good teacher,” he cautions, poking his finger in Nico’s chest. “If I crash, it’s on you.”

“Oh yeah?” Nico laughs, inching closer to Marti’s face.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They’re kissing again, Marti’s eyes melting closed as his hands find Nico’s face to hold. Warmth seeps into him, the hot spots of his skin dulling and melding together. He could get used to this morning routine.

“You’re distracting me,” Nico pops off, wrinkling his nose and kissing Marti’s cheek. He gets off of Marti, bare feet padding on the tile as he leaves the kitchen. “This probably breaks some sort of student teacher code of ethics.”

Marti just smiles and shakes his head, following Nico to go get dressed.

Outside, they walk hand in hand southwest where the city streets stretch a little longer, curve a little less. Where everything isn’t as crowded. 

“Have you ever driven? Ever? Like even in an empty parking lot?” Nico asks, swinging their hands together high so he can kiss the back of Marti’s.

“Never,” Marti laughs.

“Oh boy,” Nico sighs, but he looks over at Marti with a smile. “This will be fun.”

“Where are we going, exactly?” Marti looks behind him, pretty unfamiliar with this area.

“Um,” Nico thinks, spinning around. “Here? Wherever really. Take your pick.” He flags two cars in front of them, a little white one and a little yellow one.

Marti picks the yellow one, and Nico rushes to open the driver side door for him dramatically.

“This isn’t a date,” Marti tells him, letting Nico shut it for him anyway. 

He knocks twice on the hood, rounding the front of it to join Marti.

“Why not?” Nico asks, getting into the passenger side. “You did force me to scratch this off of the chore list and put it on the fun-stuff side.”

“I didn’t _force_ you to do anything,” Marti laughs, looking over at Nico and not quite knowing what to do with his hands.

Nico rolls his eyes. “Fine. You flirted until you got your way.”

“I was not _flirting!”_ Marti defends, high cheeks tight in a smile going red.

 _“‘So I’m a chore?’”_ Nico mocks him, voice low and dumb as he shoves his shoulder.

“I don’t sound like that,” Marti scrunches his eyes, fake annoyed.

“But that is what you said,” Nico tips his chin down, knowing. “You can say whatever you want but I think you were flirting with me.”

“Just teach me how to drive,” Marti presses warmly, neither confirming nor denying.

He already gives in to Nico so much. He doesn’t need the fact he was nearly smitten the moment they met used as amo, nevermind the fact Nico already knows. Nevermind the fact he was too.

They smile at each other for a knowing moment, their upturned lips softening from teasing smirks to affectionate grins. These past two weeks have felt like two years.

Nico explains to Marti where to put his feet — the brake, the gas, the clutch. Explains how to shift gears and when, but not to worry because he can just put his hand on the shift stick for now and Nico will do it for him so he can just get a feel.

He does, hand resting on it while Nico puts his own over Marti’s, the warm part of his palm on the back of Marti’s hand.

“Push the clutch and the break all the way down,” Nico instructs, looking over to make sure Marti’s got the right ones. “Now turn the key.”

Marti does, the car vibrating to life under them.

“This is first gear,” Nico says a little louder over the engine, moving the shift stick left and up. Marti feels him squeeze his hand after the shift. “And whenever you’re ready, you can lift the break. Don’t push the gas yet, we’ll just cruise to the end of the street.”

Marti swallows, a little nervous. “Okay,” he mouths, taking a moment to compose himself before steering the car when he lifts the break.

“See?” Nico encourages after they’ve gone a block or two. “Easy enough — wait, what are you doing?”

“Stopping at the red light?” Marti says like it’s obvious. He pushes the break back down at the intersection, the stop light going from yellow to red.

“Okay,” Nico laughs. “Why?”

“You really are a terrible teacher,” Marti chides, reaching his free hand not on the gear stick over to pinch Nico’s cheek.

“You have to keep your hand on the wheel!” Nico teases him, squishing his face into Marti’s hold. “Is that what you want me to say?”

“You can’t tell me to keep my hand on the wheel and then scold me for stopping at a red light,” Marti announces, hand relaxing to drop down on Nico’s neck. “Besides, red lights are the only time we can do this.”

He pulls Nico in to kiss him, lips pressing together and mouths opening in an easy back and forth. Warmth all over him, heart widening. It’s like he forgets what it’s like to kiss Nico every time until he kisses him again. 

He can’t get enough, but luckily he has forever to try to.

“The light is green, Marti,” Nico mumbles, turning his head to check and letting Marti kiss his cheek.

Marti just grabs his chin to turn him back, smiling over it. “Oh well. It’s not like there’s anyone behind us.”

**Author's Note:**

> helloooo you who have made it to the end of this thing. if you did, can i just say thank you? and that i really hoped you liked it? this has been the longest thing i've written in almost a year! it took me quite a bit of time to piece it all together, and this is a little fandom. so if you enjoyed it even a little bit, i'd really really _really_ love to know.
> 
> talk to me on [tumblr!](https://bisexualcaravaggio.tumblr.com/)
> 
> and reblog [the post](https://bisexualcaravaggio.tumblr.com/post/182170245251/come-out-youre-hiding-summary-basically-its) if you liked it?
> 
> 💛


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